This week, a blundering Twitter post made by @theconnor seems to have ruined that Twitterer’s job prospects at Cisco, and the whole event went viral. The original post was:
Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.
After reading this, a Cisco employee replied:
Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.
In a blog posted today, @theconnor ponders what has happened, making this point:
the point is that people with many Twitter followers can’t afford to be real people on Twitter. Tim Levad would probably never use Twitter to make a flippantly negative remark about his career, because he understands that @timmylevad is more of a mass-media channel than a human being.
It’s important to think about these things as you go about your daily life. How am I using Twitter, really? Do I have the service set up in the right way to support that? Am @I more of a mass-media channel than a human being?
My 2 cents on this issue:
You can be yourself on Twitter..and there is no difference between you and your twitter name. Whether the real you shouts at the top of your lungs “I hate this job” loud enough for the world to hear, or publishes it in text for all the world to read, there is no difference.
Just because Twitter gives you a technological way of ’shouting really loud’, doesn’t mean that it is a “fake” you or anything else. You just need to make sure that you’re only shouting the things you want people to hear. If you insist on being genuine at all times, then shout and Twitter away, just recognize there is no difference.
If you are pondering over “What is it to be genuine?”, then you should’ve said to the hiring manager, “Look, I would love the fatty pay check, but I would really hate to work here.” Obviously, you didn’t do that, which is why he offered you the job.
Posting a public comment on the internet is not a way of communicating with your 45 friends.. It is mass publishing with instantaneous distribution. Be yourself, be real, and be genuine at all times… and in the process, if you tell someone something negative in person, or shout it loudly, or mass-publish it electronically, don’t be surprised at the consequences. More than that, please don’t ponder needlessly on what is and isn’t your true self.
That being said, I don’t think people should be insulting you, but that is typical reactionary behavior.
The whole thing reminds me of a local music-related web forum I was a member of several years ago. After a few years of seeing flames supercede any positive benefit anyone could’ve gotten from the site, and the admin’s reluctance to prune the Trolls, who had completely taken over, I decided to leave.
What was interesting though was that this forum was different than most forums we, as internet users, participate in… because this one was local, and everyone knew each other in real life. We often saw each other at the events, concerts and parties that the site promoted. Despite this, people would post some of the most crass and derogitory statements about others, things they would never say to the person in real life. You could get a smile and a hug from someone at a show, followed by a long “How have you been?” talk, and then a few days later read a post they had written that cut you, your show or your friends to the bone.
If you confronted them in person or over the phone about what they had published about you, the situation was approached with alarm, taboo and complete shock. The response could be summed up by saying “What are you talking about? That was an internet post!” There was a complete wall of seperation between the real them, the flesh and blood version, and the other them that “posted stuff” on the internet. It seems that what @theconnor describes above has been adopted as canonical doctrine by the Internet Generation. It is the fundamental notion that there is a duality consisting of a real person and a digital person. For most, this doctrine is taken for granted.
When someone breaks the doctrine, by confronting flesh and blood over what their digital self published, the shock almost always leads the flesh and blood person to quickly downplay and move past the situation. That leaves room for the digital person to come back in full force, publishing about the taboo meeting on the internet, where it can be reviewed, analyzed, criticized and lampooned in published form.
I’m hoping that as the internet evolves, people will realize what should be completely obvious: that there is no difference between what one speaks in real life or mass-publishes on the internet. One immediate result of such a realization is that people won’t be getting fired over their Twitter or Facebook posts… If they speak their honest opinion at all times, and not just on the internet, they won’t ever get those jobs in the first place.
