The Tyler Hayes

I started writing a heated post on this a while back at Shmeriously.com, but never published it. This was probably good, because at the time I thought I was informed, but wasn’t. Now, I know I’m not informed. But I’m also now okay with publishing my slanted opinions on the topic just to get them out there. Also, I wanted to see just how often some of this happens; I was not happily surprised. I’d be glad to hear your thoughts.

So what is the difference anyway?

Online reputation management is something everyone should do, and soon enough must do. It’s when you set some things to private when you apply for a job. It’s when you make sure you don’t curse excessively in a comment on some blog. It’s when you search for yourself on Google to make sure nothing inappropriate exists regarding you or your family.

Online reputation pruning is a course in egoism, excessive self-pride, and is just downright absurd. It’s when you de-tag yourself from photos on Facebook (or, likewise, choose not to tag yourself in your own photo albums). Or, even worse, when you choose not to tag others in your photos because you don’t want them to be seen with you. It’s when you disgenuinely add kind comments on friends’ blogs to make yourself look nicer to your other friends. At its worst, its when you delete others’ Wall posts on your Facebook profile, or delete comments on your blog.

Pruning can happen for multiple reasons: lack of self-confidence, unawareness (rarely the cause), malicious intent, etc. I think it’s a mixture of these things, as well as a personal values theory. We prune because we don’t know what we want, and therefore we lack consistent, important values. I think we realize, deep down, that we aren’t being very frugal, humble, or honorable by exhibiting some of the behaviors we do. So we tend to whine a lot. In this case, the whining just isn’t vocal unless you ask someone why they’re pruning. As a result, we don’t want to take personal responsibility for our actions.

Warning: rant ahead.

Online reputation pruning is artificial in its truest sense: it’s not natural. When you prune a bush, it is no longer a bush until it re-grows that which you trimmed. Pruning your online rep is no different. You have to keep it up forever once you start; otherwise, enough information will eventually overtake all that you created/deleted/changed and your online rep will be, disturbingly, what it should have been the whole time: you. The difference is: pruning a bush is OK because that makes it art; so you’d have to want to argue that your online identity is a form of art (performance art, maybe? ).

This is Generation Y’s most horrible form of hubris. Our inability to differentiate between needs vs. wants (in the survival sense, not the Maslow-ian sense that you learned in Intro to Psychology). We need to manage our online reputation so we don’t get fired, we want to prune our online reputation so only our most “beautiful” Facebook pictures show up. Not that it’s completely our fault; after all, the Web is all new territory, right?

Wrong. Social media is not about creating an image for yourself. It’s about creating a realistic extension of your real self, just online for people to see when they aren’t around you. Why should online virtues, mores, morals, and ethics be any different than their offline, real world counterparts? Not to mention Generation Y started using AOL 14 years ago. We grew up with this stuff!

I’m not sure if there are generational differences on this; but, I’d be willing Gen Y does it more than any other by a long shot. Online reputation pruning must stop. And now.