Now I know why my eyes hurt
It's because I roll them so much in response to the advice of employment experts.
The latest item, which has come at me twice in networking meetings, is a rather sinister expansion of an obvious observation about social networking sites. The obvious observation is aimed, naturally, at twentysomethings, since of course no old people would ever use social networking sites*: "keep your toga party pictures private**." The favourite cute saying is to put nothing on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see on page one of the New York Times the next day.
The sinister expansion is the suggestion that you avoid saying or posting any words or images that could possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, offend anyone in any HR department anywhere in the solar system. When last I looked, the word for this was censorship and I'll have no part of it, thank you very much. What put me over the top, I think, was the fear one person in the group had about putting family cookout pictures on the family Facebook profile.
I remarked earlier that I have no anxiety about seeing anything I write on page one of the New York Times, provided I get the byline and the cheque. I have made just about all of my living putting my name on my words, or making other people's signed words look their best, for 25 years. My education and my experience have given me both a theoretical and a practical appreciation of the limits of free speech, libel, and copyright law. This is a background that few employment pundits enjoy. Perhaps—no, certainly—most people looking for work don't have these advantages. However, some do, and people who seek to tell me how to find work ought to have the flexibility to recognise that. The credibility of career advice columnists is low enough without them trying to shove everyone into the same tent of timidity.
Kindly remember that the key term on most social networking sites is social. LinkedIn reverses the equation, giving priority to networking of the professional variety. Facebook keeps me in touch with my relations, while LinkedIn keeps me in touch with my professional relationships (or would if I gave it due diligence). Perhaps the distinction is unclear to some people. I guess they are the same ones who think that one cover letter suits all possible occasions. Who am I to disabuse competing job seekers? However, I have some right to expect better of anyone who presumes to offer me expert advice.
The reductio ad absurdum of this panicked reasoning is to imagine what Twitter would look like if every tweet had to be vetted by an attorney. To paraphrase Bobby Day:
All the little lawyers on Federal Street
Love to hear their clients go tweet tweet tweet.
New times always require new thinking, but the people making money from advice to the unemployed seem unable to grasp that. The play 1776 archly portrays the timidity of a Continental Congress overwhelmed by its undertaking until, in frustration, John Adams shouts:
It's a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend somebody!
As writers, we probably will.
*Note to the age-biased: you may want to check your prejudices against the demographics. Older users are Facebook's fastest-growing segment, and we'll be taking over Twitter next, mwahahaha!
**Note to the job advice pundits: "toga party" is so 1963.
The latest item, which has come at me twice in networking meetings, is a rather sinister expansion of an obvious observation about social networking sites. The obvious observation is aimed, naturally, at twentysomethings, since of course no old people would ever use social networking sites*: "keep your toga party pictures private**." The favourite cute saying is to put nothing on the Internet that you wouldn't want to see on page one of the New York Times the next day.
The sinister expansion is the suggestion that you avoid saying or posting any words or images that could possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, offend anyone in any HR department anywhere in the solar system. When last I looked, the word for this was censorship and I'll have no part of it, thank you very much. What put me over the top, I think, was the fear one person in the group had about putting family cookout pictures on the family Facebook profile.
I remarked earlier that I have no anxiety about seeing anything I write on page one of the New York Times, provided I get the byline and the cheque. I have made just about all of my living putting my name on my words, or making other people's signed words look their best, for 25 years. My education and my experience have given me both a theoretical and a practical appreciation of the limits of free speech, libel, and copyright law. This is a background that few employment pundits enjoy. Perhaps—no, certainly—most people looking for work don't have these advantages. However, some do, and people who seek to tell me how to find work ought to have the flexibility to recognise that. The credibility of career advice columnists is low enough without them trying to shove everyone into the same tent of timidity.
Kindly remember that the key term on most social networking sites is social. LinkedIn reverses the equation, giving priority to networking of the professional variety. Facebook keeps me in touch with my relations, while LinkedIn keeps me in touch with my professional relationships (or would if I gave it due diligence). Perhaps the distinction is unclear to some people. I guess they are the same ones who think that one cover letter suits all possible occasions. Who am I to disabuse competing job seekers? However, I have some right to expect better of anyone who presumes to offer me expert advice.
The reductio ad absurdum of this panicked reasoning is to imagine what Twitter would look like if every tweet had to be vetted by an attorney. To paraphrase Bobby Day:
All the little lawyers on Federal Street
Love to hear their clients go tweet tweet tweet.
New times always require new thinking, but the people making money from advice to the unemployed seem unable to grasp that. The play 1776 archly portrays the timidity of a Continental Congress overwhelmed by its undertaking until, in frustration, John Adams shouts:
It's a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend somebody!
As writers, we probably will.
*Note to the age-biased: you may want to check your prejudices against the demographics. Older users are Facebook's fastest-growing segment, and we'll be taking over Twitter next, mwahahaha!
**Note to the job advice pundits: "toga party" is so 1963.
Labels: job searches, social networking
posted by Uncle | 22:59
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