Tuesday, May 4, 2010

How tenure can help your sex blogging career

I've written before about the hazards of blogging. It never is quite as simple as proclaiming freedom of speech. People judge and people have stake in your public persona. I'm becoming more and more aware of this as I scour the internet in advance of my exit from grad school and my entrance into the real working world-- detagging myself from unflattering photos, increasing my Facebook privacy settings, regularly Googling myself just to ensure there is not a webpage dedicated to antics from my 19th birthday party.

Still, there's nothing like a few high profile cases-- both to remind us that anonymity can be fleeting, as well as the awesome hypocrisy involved.

Case #1- Anonymous sex blogger, who writes about her sex life and reviews pornography, through a Twitter/Google malfunction, accidentally links her real name to her blog, which is promptly found by her boss.

Case #2- California State University professor's non-anonymous website, in which he focuses extensively on the how-tos of being a sex tourist in Thailand (including how to pick up grieving women at a temple and getting lap dances from teenagers), also gets discovered by his superiors.

Guess who gets fired?

The moral of this story? Be careful what you put online. Or just try really hard to get tenure.

9 comments:

ablog said...

Amusingly, I just updated all my facebook pivacy settings and changed my profile picture for job-search related reasons.

Katelin said...

wow those are both awesome and ridiculous and just wow, haha.

Nilsa @ SoMi Speaks said...

Or just assume anyone and everyone in your life will discover your blog and don't write about things you wouldn't want them reading. =)

Beth said...

Wow – that ticks me off. My youngest belongs to an organization created to eliminate child sex tourism and went to Thailand for that very purpose. I’m sending him the link.

Mandy said...

I work really had to keep my professional life separate from my personal life, but I do have pretty high facebook privacy settings and such. Its just a good idea.

Unknown said...

Its so tough right? I mean I am just shifting into a job in social media where I think it will be more acceptable for me to have an online presence instead of me trying to covertly slipping my blog to people at work like some kind of drug dealer. I think ultimately you will find the lifestyle and blog-style that suits your needs!

Jessica (Bayjb) said...

That's something people really need to keep in mind. Anything you put online can be found and traced back. As long as you're okay with it, that's cool but post with care.

P said...

Having been burned in the past, I'm a lot more careful about what I put online now. But it's still a worry at times.

eric1313 said...

Thank you for sharing this lovely bit if too-true advice.

However, your persona is and has always been rather squeaky clean with only hints of *other things*. I'm the one who is a bonafide scene, even more unabashed since I use recent pictures of myself.

Also, since you don't blog very often anymore, I'll save these posts to read one month at a time.

The Blogger Gods are trying to tell me I need a relaxing discipline (oxymoron Thursday), since my word verification is "yogized".