The Downside of Social Networking

A while back I posted about the the dark side of the internet. I was presented with a real life example today:

A friend of a co-worker was dating a girl. She told him she'd call him back Saturday night, but never did. She called him on Sunday apologizing and explaining that she had gone to bed early that night. Later, he noticed a new photo of her out partying in a bar posted to her Facebook profile. In the background of the photo, he could see that the Georgetown-Villanova game was playing on TV.

The game was on Saturday.

Busted!

The internet makes it a lot harder to tell a lie. Even a little white one...

Seth Godin notes this fact as he relates the story of a friend searching for a housekeeper on Craigslist. Googling three of the candidates she found a binge drinker, shoplifter and a personal blog entry bemoaning the fact that she was applying for menial jobs that were beneath her.

Needless to say, none of those candidates got the job.

Fortunately for me, I have too little time to post incriminating photos of myself on Facebook. Perhaps I should take advantage of Mark Morford's Geekamania. His tongue-in-cheek offer claims:

"We design, set up and maintain as many hip social networking pages as you want, spinning off the information you provided but also totally rearranging it and making it up at will, all to make you sound exactly as cute/clever/sexy/boring/lonely/unstable (you choose) as you've always dreamed. You don't have to do a thing!"

Hmm--I wonder if Geekamania would blog for me...