Hidden Lives posted

In July of 2005 i wanted to make my site nicer, more organized, and more fun. To do this I added Tagging. Tagging is this really nice feature used by popular sites like Flickr, YouTube, Google, etc. Tags rule. They invoke a lot of coordination in a web site and are just fun.

I decided to use this to tag all my photos of people I have photos of. It was a huge task and took me a really long time, but in the end it turned out to be awesome. Everyone likes pictures of themselves, no matter how non-vain they claim to be. Also, everyone googles their name from time to time (no matter how non-vain you claim to be). So if I tag things nicely, my friends will probably find photos of themselves on my site.

Besides the advantages I've already mentioned, tagging has allowed me to get back in touch with some old friends, which has been really nice. They would have never found me had I not tagged them correctly. How often do you google all your friends? You don't. But because of my tagging, they found me.

Since I've added tagging, I've been emailed by various people asking me to take their photos off of my site or untag them. This always makes me upset. The reasoning is always "jobs, family, church, whatever." Don't get me wrong, I've worried about it from time to time as well. But why is it better to live a hidden life than be honest? Why can't people be honest with their jobs and family? I have been guilty of it.

It just really makes me sad when people tell me to censor my own site because they're scared of what people will think. I have a friend who just got a job making 6 figures. He has plenty of incriminating photos on my site. Did his company do a google search for him? Who knows. I hope they did, because work and play are 2 completely different things.

Am I scared about getting/retaining a job with the information about myself online? No. Because I rule at what I do. I am a programmer and I am a partier. When work knows about my partying, they might not understand, but they hired me to work. When my friends know about my programming, they might not understand, but they befriended me to party. It is ok to not be professional when you are not on the job!

That said. I am really against censoring my web site. I will take down your stuff if you ask, because I am your friend. But it's my web site and my photos. I hate compromising the integrity of my taxonomy, content, and fun for your fear. If you don't want people to think you act a certain way, maybe you shouldn't act that way. Or, if you don't want to change the way you act, maybe you should rethink the kind of life you are getting yourself into.

It's sad when jobs take over lives. Please understand that you work to play, not the other way around.
Tags: Rant, Web

comments

  • I had the same problem with all the pictures of myself naked on the internet. So i emailed my self and asked to take them down. But i am an asshole and didn't do it. So the naked pictures are still on my site. wtf.



    Anyway, I think its dumb for them to think that their picture not being on your (or anyone elses site) would increase the facade of them being puritan or pious. it seems to me that the people who are most uncomfortable with themselves are the people who are asking you this. The people who are rocking it don't give a fuck. you don't see super successful people saying "omg.. there is a picture on your site of me not working. i think my employer might figure out that i have a life after work.. OMG"



    dumb fucks.

    harper posted

  • If you're not worried about anyone seeing stuff on your website, why do you censor the comments swear words then?



    fuck

    shit

    dammit

    inquiring public posted

  • honest question by the way. and the last swear word I thought was censored. didn't think it would get through.

    inquiring public posted

  • most of the reason the swear word censorship has kept up for so long is the exact reason of this article.



    people are telling me to censor my censorship??? once again, it is my site, peeps are telling me how to run it. i swear as much as anyone here, maybe more. each month that someone has not told me to take my censorship off, i've removed a swear word from the filter.



    my site, don't tell me how to run it. telling me i'm bad for censoring swear words is just as bad as telling me i'm bad for not censoring swear words.

    derek posted

  • Sooooooo... do you want me to blur out the sex tape of you and Kari that I put on youtube?

    ricky posted

  • Now that shit is funny!!

    Jeff posted

  • its really just a sad commentary on life in America...work is supposed to be all we think about, and all we care about...who cares if you go out and get smashingly drunk, hump a few random objects, or make kissy-faces at everyone? i'm gonna die, and i want to have all the fun i can while i'm here, not sit around and think about work or worry about what my boss will think...our country's belief system is just totally fucked, and probably will never change...lets move to canada!

    nick posted

  • o canada!

    our home and native land!

    true patriot love in all thy sons command.

    derek posted

  • I think you've blown yourself as a victim derek waaaaaay out of porportion. "Your website and Your photos" is a totally selfish and big-headed statement.



    Unless you want to completely challenge society's standpoint on excessive partying and its relation to church, work, family matters you should completely respect your friend's wishes to not publish images they don't feel comfortable being in, and leave it at that.



    Writing an full-on post complaining about it as if its some overly taxing work and physically hurts you to do is ridicilous. And the fact that you HAVE a good job, a wife, and are obviously cool with your parents/church/whatever seeing these pics only makes you sound even more narcissistic and I really cannot sympathise with your plight.



    I dont have any bad pics of me here, and if I did I probably wouldn't care - but I can totally understand why others would. You should be taking pictures of your friends having a good time because you want to remember those good times! - not build up some inventory of images to tag for your own personal worth.



    Just my thoughts..



    alexei posted

  • 1. it IS selfish, duh. it is a site for myself. see the url? it's not everyoneelse.broox.com.



    2. the point of this article is to challenge that. not excessive partying, excessive relation between personal lives and jobs.



    3. it's a rant post. i'm not looking for sympathy.



    4. taking photos to show the fun we have is exactly the reason i take photos. generally i try to take photos to show events that aren't part of people's every day lives. for instance, how often do people talk about or take photos of themselves eating lunch? not often, it's an every day, routine thing. things that are not so routine are fun to talk about, capture, and share.



    5. this article and comment is, as you said, just my thoughts.

    derek posted

  • I'm going to start taking pictures of you eating lunch. Every day.

    cedric posted

  • sounds good, haha.



    but if i tell you to hide them on flickr, you better do it.

    derek posted

  • this whole article just really brings up how the internet has completely shifted the whole balance between our public lives and our private lives...if you had these pictures in a photo album at home, do you think anyone would care? probably not...but now that its out there for anyone to see, armed only with your name, or even just your last name, it becomes a little more delicate...i am completely for posting everything on the internet, but maybe my personal life matches my public life a bit more closely than some people

    nick posted

  • I would just like to post on your site that I think Alexei is a jonking joinker!

    Jeff posted

  • What a great article! I agree with what you said about people trying to 'hide' their real self, as though they are ashamned of who they are, or what they do in their private lives (ie. having a little fun).



    I also agree that if people want the pics gotten rid of, of course you should abide by their wishes and remove them. Little sad to me though.



    Not really sure who Alexei is but I have to agree with Jeff and say, she does seem like she's a 'jonking joinker' .....whatever that is.

    dad posted

  • Day 1: www.flickr.com/photo...13032/

    cedric posted

  • You can keep up all the photo's of me cause I'm a vain cuss and I can't remember half the time I hangout with you anyways. Not that you do either. It's better to live with yourself than be let others tell you how to live. To that end, I will keep partying til the Josh, Wingert, and you still exist in my pathetic life.

    nathan deutmeyer posted

  • please delete the photos of my penis

    harper posted

  • I have pictures of you smoking weed and destroying public property and will send them to any prospective employer. How's that? (Kidding, of course)



    But really, it's just a matter of where you draw the line on what's acceptable at work, and what will reflect on your public image when it's out there on the web.



    I used to have moral issues about working anywhere that requires a urine test, extensive background check, or anything of that sort -- who cares, I can do the job and I show up every day, right? It's an invasion of my privacy. I let that drop for now, but it still bugs me a little.. it's one of those things where I disagree with the system but I'll smile and let it slide for now.



    But it gets into legal issues and crap.. imagine that somehow, against my better judgement, I am driving from a company meeting to a hotel on a business trip somewhere and some car bumps me. I get caught just over the legal alcohol limit -- suddenly, the other guy decides to sue my company, etc., on some bullshit charge because I "hit them" while on company business.



    Suddenly it's an issue; didn't my manager check what sort of person I was? There are drunk pictures of me all over if you type my name into Google, couldn't they have guessed the outcome before hiring me? So companies get paranoid about hiring people with any visible history of "irresponsibility," real or not.



    It's obviously an exaggeration, but this is the sort of paranoid corner that we're backed into. So unless you can decide not to work for anyone who cares, or hope that they don't do work for anyone who cares, and so on down the line, there's the idea of keeping a public image that has some sort of sense of propriety.



    But yeah, it's bull(censored).

    concerned party posted

  • I think that last one is trying to say that you'd never make it as a social conservative

    mh posted

  • People at work have found out about Derek's website when they googled my name one day, and there are some pretty interesting pictures of me on here. Well, I caught some shit about it for a few days, laughed it off, and now they are regulars on the site. Sometimes they remind me what I did on the weekend with these guys before my mind clears enough to remember.



    I love it.

    Josh posted

  • Here's what the people at metafilter seem to think about it:

    ask.metafilter.com/mefi/51452

    mh posted

  • You may post any/all pictures of me doing whatever it is I do with you...even the naked ones. I don't give a fuck who sees them. I rock because I'm finally on Google...go me.

    Rico posted

  • I respect how you feel about this, and I agree that it is sad that employers rely on this type of information, but the fact of the matter is, my profession is pretty conservative and I have a lot working against me anyway as a woman. We have had lecture after lecture at school about professional and panels of people who lost jobs based on content on websites. With such a competitive job market, employers only need the littlest thing to disqualify you from a job. And, at this point, I don't want a picture of me dressed as an american gladiator giving an employer a reason to not hire me - Realistically, my $120,000 of educational debt cannot afford to let those types of pictures stay up because I do not agree with what employers are doing. The fact of the matter is, I need that job. I am not asking that ALL the pics come down, or even the tags. I love reading your site to catch up on friends and see funny pics. I feel bad that I had to ask you to do it, but its a very real situation and I do not want to be the person who cannot get a job because of a picture on the internet. The pictures of me are actually pretty benign, to be honest, so I do not feel like I am particularly hiding anything, everything else is out in the open.



    I second a lot of what "concerned party" said. I may not necessarily agree with what the employer is doing, but they are doing this to protect their own asses down the road. What if a client googles their attorney and sees a picture of them passed out and covered in vomit (something many people have done before in their lives)? It undermines their client relationship and decreases the amount of trust between attorney and client. Plus, people in professions that are regulated by "a bar" or a "board" must always live in fear that all their moments of impropriety may end up bringing them before a board and their licenses get revoked. You never know what those members of the board/bar will find to be inappropriate.

    I have written way too much, but yeah. I am glad that you take them down for friends, and I felt bad that I asked you to.

    Shannon posted

  • i'm just glad i have job where it doesn't matter wtf is on the web



    the more i'm on the web the better.



    TGFBAMS

    (thank god for being a male stripper)

    kevi posted

  • This site is very cool throughout the Internet by a hot girl Clik

    liargistilina posted