A friend of mine recently gave me a tutorial on how girls judge Facebook profiles. I don't know how they find the time to do anything else. It's not surprising, but still disturbing, how closely some people monitor their online representations. They're stuck hopping to and fro with their best foot permanently forward. The problem, of course, is that while people try to make themselves appear they way they want to appear, they forget everyone else is doing the same. It's impossible to even begin to accurately judge somebody by Googling his or her name.
Any moment in a young adult's life can potentially end up online. In practice, however, it is typically only the most outrageous, the most accomplished, the most clever moments that make it. Nobody documents the vast quietude of everyday life, and perhaps with good reason. But this creates a radically skewed representation of said young adult. Facebook becomes an unnerving world of happy memories and cheerful posts. Meanwhile, pictures, which are most likely to be taken at parties or on vacation, create collages of seemingly jet-setting boozers.
Naturally, everyone else is expected to keep up. The Web presences of friends can become peer pressure cookers. It seems as if everyone's always partying, always being witty, always having the time of their lives. Blogs that are nothing more than vanity journals show off cliched wisdom. YouTube videos let the world see how much fun a particular concert or drunken night was. No girl's night out is complete without taking a few dozen pictures -— to be uploaded the next morning — to prove to the world her prettiness, pleasantness and popularity.
Once online, something is almost certainly there forever. Most members of older generations may be able to keep evidence of their immature past safely tucked away in old shoe boxes, but not so for today's young adults. Cameras are ubiquitous these days, and they go hand-in-hand with the Internet. The Internet has a Tralfamadorian aspect that would make Vonnegut proud: That woman may be professional this moment, but is a drunkard in plenty of other moments, just a click away. Facebook profiles of deceased peers inevitably become eerie shrines laced with the present tense.
Of course, there will certainly be good that comes from this ebb of privacy. Harmful conservative norms are falling away at a strong clip as it becomes harder and harder to cover up indiscretions. We, as a society, will have to come to have a sense of humor about ourselves and perhaps even talk about taboos instead of sweeping them under the rug. Still, that is not a desirable trade off, especially since these norms would inevitably fall anyway. And then, of course, gossip and ugly rumors circulate at lightening speed online ... and haunt long after the original poster has forgotten them.
Everything private, the Internet lectures, is potentially public. This, however, does not mean that one's public image is necessarily an accurate reflection of one's private life. Indeed, employers and casual Facebook stalkers alike who try to look up people online are digging into a house of mirrors they most likely do not understand.
Sean Tierney is a senior in the College of Arts and Science. He can be reached at sean.f.tierney@vanderbilt.edu.
