Social Media and the Real World
I heard disturbing news the other night. A hometown friend’s son was one of 10 fraternity members arrested in New Orleans in May on charges related to a hazing incident at Tulane University. I Googled his name and was shocked to read the details: boiling water, pledge initiation, second- and third-degree burns.
The Smoking Gun had an explicit article about the alleged April 25th “Hell Night” activities at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house, and links to the arrest warrants and police mug shots of the frat members charged in the incident. The Google search also revealed several news
articles about the incident published in traditional news outlets in New Orleans and across the country in the boys’ hometown newspapers. And, since this is the era of Web 2.0, there were several blog posts devoted to the subject, including this “off topic” posting on PocketFives, a website devoted to poker. And, yes, there were comments. LOTS of comments. On the PocketFives site and on other sites, the hazing incident had definitely sparked a conversation. Or maybe it would be more accurate to refer to it as a shouting match, with some posters calling the fraternity members names that were nearly as awful as the incident that triggered the debate.
It struck me that regrettable behavior, whether associated with a college fraternity initiation or at any time in our personal or professional life, lives on long after resolution, in part, thanks to the Internet. And, perhaps unwittingly, the fraternity member’s friends may be contributors to the endless trail and the consequences. A Facebook page they posted, Free J—– B—–, has no privacy restrictions. There, for anyone to see, is his unflattering police mug shot along with news and wall postings that may be funny to his college pals, but probably wouldn’t be amusing to a potential future employer. 
And none of us should think that current and future employers aren’t looking at — and judging — our online presence. In its June 2007 issue, the Harvard Business Review published an interactive case study, We Googled You. The article poses a dilemma for an employer who thinks he’s found a dream candidate for a job until an online revelation proves that nothing from our past — even details found on page nine of a Google search — is ever erased.
Searching for Tim Russert
Typing the words “Tim Russert” into the Google search box Sunday night delivered 2,960,000 “personalized results” for the NBC newsman who died Friday afternoon. Surprisingly, what floated to the top was not news reports about his untimely death but links to his two books. There were, however, two related search choices at the very top of the page: Tim Russert dies and Tim Russert dead.
What exactly was I searching for? What was my intent? Was I looking for a new nugget of information or trying to make sense of a sorrowful event that has shaken the Washington journalism community where I spent so many years?
Perhaps both. I was also trying to tackle this week’s reading of John Battelle’s The Search How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. I thought about the questions posed by my Social Media course instructor, Garrett Graff: “Should we be afraid of Google?” Is it too big/powerful?
I also visited the sites of other search engines. Again, I typed in the words “Tim Russert.” GoodSearch revealed 823,610 results and Big Daddy spewed out 9,620,000 hits. Wow, I thought, even more than Google. Yahoo news also delivered more than 9.5 million results.
What to do with this information? Again, what was my intent? I did discover some new details and read two wonderful essays that brought some sense of understanding to the recent events. (And I also learned how many other search engines — specialized and general — are out there.)
But what I began to more fully realize is that a search engine – be it Google or any other – gives each of us access to knowledge and information that is limited only by our curiosity. I may have unearthed a small detail that I was searching for, but I also discovered how a blogger in Australia responded to the news.
Wherever our curiosity takes us; however we quench our thirst for knowledge; whatever our intent, Google and the search engine community have made the world all the more accessible for each of us to explore. And that is a good thing.
