Personal Content & Context

In todays new digital landscape, you can connect, re-connect, comment, post, reply, friend, un-friend, become a fan of, and much, much more. So given the digital worlds capabilities and fairly open access, it’s safe to say that for most of the 15-45 year old demographic has some sort of digital presence. As we learn how to manage our digital lives, I think it’s important, and prudent to look at two aspects of personal content.

The first being the content we actually post and create, and the second being access to that content and how it can be removed from it’s original context. It’s safe to say that not enough people realize that some of the content that they create is forever, it was just a Twitter post (which if memory serves me correctly, the library of congress is attempting to archive) it was just a photo on my Facebook page, it was just a harmless “Text From Last Night”... and so on. These are all examples of things users can control and should think about a little more before releasing, but what happens when that content is taken out of context?

What prompted me to post this entry was a recollection from way back in 2008, when a friend of mine in NYC forwarded me to a site that well, I was on, unbeknownst to me. Apparently I was nominated for “The Sexiest Man in Advertising”. I’m sure your thinking the same thing I was, “we have to get some better looking men in the industry”, but seriously, I was a little put off by it. I’ve dated and known so serious psychos in the past and didn’t really have much interest in being associated with this, and didn’t really want to end up explaining it to my girlfriend at the time. And even more important I did not want to hear about it at the office.

So I began the process of digging into where this came from, the photo was from my agency’s website, and it was posted not only on Agency Spy, (who removed me most promptly) but also on another site Hasta la Creative, who I never managed to receive a response from. The creepier part of this was after my removal a poster on Agency Spy asked what happened to me, and why they couldn’t vote for me, thank you, but no thank you.

It was this final comment that really illustrated that once it’s out there and your associated with it, that’s it, it’s a part of you digital profile. Now I’m well aware this is not a very big deal, but I have to be honest if this happened to my little sister, or girlfriend I wouldn’t be so inclined to laugh it off, I know that sounds a bit chauvinistic, but I still think guys should open doors, and have a tendency to over use sir & mam, so you’ll just have to get over it.

I guess the fundamental question I’m asking here is are we moral enough as a digital society not to take things from where they belong? And are we cognizant enough to know that what we do release into the digital world is our public image?