Some Photos

Notting Hill Market



Perjit



Liverpool Street Station

The online persona

I was online when it was weird and geeky. I was on IRC when you had to whisper about it, lest anyone heard you. Lately though, we've all seen so much about Twitter that our eyeballs are ready to pop at another reference to tweets, tweeps or Stephen Fry. I don't know exactly when it became cool to be connected to the net every hour of your waking day, but it has definitely happened. Online social networking has gone mainstream.

It's starting to raise questions about how much of ourselves we allow to be online and what risks come with a public e-life. There was a story recently about a girl who was fired for posting on her Facebook that her job was boring. It's not the first time something like that has happened, but this story seemed to strike a chord with the press, probably because of popular Facebook et al have become.

I was torn on my feelings about her firing. On one hand, perhaps employers have a right to staff who are giving 110% every day, arriving 15 minutes early and willing to stay late when needed, plastering smiles on their faces from 8.45 to 6.40 every day. Why should they employ someone who is openly bored and uninterested? On the other hand, who hasn't ever had a day when they've gone home and bitched privately to their flatmates, family or dog about their crappy job? No employee is that perfect specimen, we're human.

It's not like she mentioned the actual company, where they could have a point about bringing public disrepute to their name. The only difference between this girl bitching to her dog and bitching to her twitter, is that her boss had the opportunity to find out. There have been parallels drawn with a boss overhearing comments in the pub, but it's not quite the same. She knew she was putting her comment out into the public domain... does that mean she shouldn't have said it?

Recently I've been working on a new website to publicise my freelancing services (web design, photography etc) and at the same time I've been Twittering. On my Twitter I have followers who are friends, followers who are family and followers who are potential professional contacts. Every time I post a tweet I have to consider who I am talking to. This is something I've been familiar with for a long time, since my brother has also been a member of almost every place I've ever hung out online. I'm always conscious of what I post, but it's becoming more and more of an issue as the line between real life and online blurs and especially as it becomes an issue in my professional life. I can't decide what blurring I should allow between my personal online life and my professional one. Should I start multiple twitters/blogs/etc, one for my personal life and another for my professional life? Am I required to separate myself out?

Personally, I don't want to distil my separate personalities and I'm really hoping that employers will begin to realise that their employees are real people. Is someone less likely to hire me because they read my blog entries about being hit on by a weirdo in a kebab shop? Or being mugged? Or twittering about eating pancakes? I hope not. However, there's nothing in my blogs/twitters/old forum accounts that would seriously incriminate me though. I've never stolen from a job, or not bothered to show up, or done anything to make me seriously unemployable. Maybe I'd feel differently if I had.

I think we're just moving towards more transparency. With that comes the responsibility for the employee to not transparently be a useless unemployable arse, and the responsibility for the employer to accept their employees' personalities.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! There are of course multiple other issues such as posting about criminal activity, opening yourself up to stalkers/criminals/thefts (although I have a low tolerance for silly irrational fear about this), and I'm sure you can think of others. Discuss!