I remember the first time that I Googled myself. I felt so weird about it, like it was a really vain thing to do. Little did I know at the time that the action is referred to as ‘vanity searching’, or even by some, as egosurfing. No wonder I felt so strange. I remember the mix of emotions — the fear of seeing information about myself online, mixed with the greater fear of seeing nothing. These were then confused by a third feeling of total self-consciousness — I think I literally glanced over my shoulder to make sure that nobody was watching me commit such a self-indulgent act. I know I am not the only one. A 2007 Pew poll found that nearly 50% of Americans vanity search. As I become more knowledgeable about how ’search’ works, thanks to John Battelle’s enlightening book, I now have a better understanding of why the first website listed when searching for my name is Zoominfo, which in fact I do not even have a profile set up for! I find this infuriating but realize that there is not much I can do to change it until I start putting in the effort to boost the more preferable sites about me, organically. Despite being a young person quite new to the online publishing world, I have a small list of things on the web that people may want to know about me (rather than solely my existence on social networking sites). For instance, that I wrote for the Michigan Daily and that there are very funny pictures of me as a college freshman. Or perhaps that I work with young people living with HIV or that I have run two marathons.
So now I am starting to feel better. At least from what I can see, there is enough about me on the web for someone to learn some basic facts, and there is nothing overly incriminating or embarrassing. Then I discover Egosurf, a website dedicated to giving you an ego ranking, based on a search of your name and blogspot. Guess what mine is…a big fat zero! Really, that is how they coin it! Then it called me a loser.
Like Dan Gillmor in We The Media, Battelle launches into a detailed debate about privacy, or lack there of, when it comes to search. Let me get this straight. The Do No Evil mantra that Google espouses is supposed to help us feel rest assured that they will never give out our private information to anyone, particularly to Government. However, even if they do, they would never be able to tell us. I see. Now I’m glancing over my shoulder again. I work in sexual health and I also work with refugees. I search terms like ‘Joseph Kony‘ and ‘sex offender‘ all day long. If all the Government really needs is some inckling that I am up to no good, “how does one tell the difference between [my] First Amendment right to do searches about terrrorists, for example, and the searches of a real terrorist?” (Battelle, page 200). Today, Congress voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act without reforms to ensure that anti-terrorism resources are being used to investigate potential terrorists, rather than everyday Americans who are utilizing search. At what point will our freedom of and right to information create a global paranoia that stops us altogether from accessing the Internet and returning to a state of simplicity and ignorance? Or am I just being paranoid?
