Social Media is the New Tattoo
Back in those halcyon days of high school my BFF Shannon started talking about getting a tattoo. A nice big one that no doubt was intended to shock her parents, get her officially banned from church, and seal her social identity as a true rebel. I remember briefly thinking how cool it would be to get one, too.
That fantasy lasted a whole three minutes.
While visions of Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song angel may have briefly danced in my head (yes, I also thought I was a rebel) there was this little voice of reason that chose at that moment to scream rather loudly “DON’T DO ITTTTT!”
Yeah, I wasn’t much of a rebel after all. My wonder years consisted of a series of close attachments to more audacious friends who I could live through vicariously. Heck, I wasn’t even cool enough to let my senior prom date wear a Zeppelin T-shirt under his jacket for fear we’d get thrown out. I even made him change. Some rebel I was.
I don’t know if Shannon ever got that tattoo. At least during high school she didn’t have the requisite courage in the face of needles, didn’t have the $300, and had a lack of vehicle freedom that all conspired to stop her. Regardless, it was pretty fortunate. My father would’ve never allowed me within 100 miles of her for the rest of my natural life.
Fast forward “a few years.” (Aren’t euphemisms awesome?)
While getting a tattoo takes planning, a stuffed piggy bank, and the keys to an unguarded vehicle, social media carries some of the same qualities of a tattoo with none of the barriers to entry.
Let’s compare:
Tattoo:
Permanent, mostly irreversible, possibly a job killer. Captured evidence of questionable judgment at some point in the past. Even if it’s just a whimsical remnant of an indiscriminate youth, its current presence and visibility makes a statement that can’t be easily erased or ignored.
Social Media:
Permanent, mostly irreversible, possibly a job killer. Captured evidence of questionable judgment at some point in the past. Even if it’s just a whimsical remnant of an indiscriminate youth, its current presence and visibility makes a statement that can’t be easily erased or ignored.
It’s a good thing social media wasn’t around back when Shannon and I were in high school or college. I perish the thought of what would have probably been questionably inappropriate blog postings following us some 20 or 30 years later. Do I really want the 17 year-old writer in me having any influence on what potential clients or employers are thinking about me today? Or what about the 22 year-old me that got more than a few letters to the editor published? Today, all that would be online. A part of my permanent record.
Baby Boomers, Generation X, and the early end of Gen Y got lucky that social media transparency didn’t come into vogue until just recently. We’ve all (for the most part) had the time to acquire the wisdom and experience that creates at least a little caution.
But what about younger Gen Y and Millenials?
What about 10 year-olds with a Twitter account?
What about 13 year-olds with a MySpace?
What about parents creating baby Facebook pages and planning childrens’ names around available URLs?
Social media transparency has created a whole phenomenon that hasn’t had time to hit us yet. What happens when an entire generation that was “born online” (or has had an online presence since even middle school or junior high) is ready to be taken seriously?
It’s always been said “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Well what happens when who you know knows everything there is to know?
It’s like you’re writing an ongoing resume. That spans 10, 20, 30+ years. Gone are the days of carefully controlling a potential employer’s perception with two sheets of paper. Your identity is online and the only relevant pieces of information on that two-page resume are the two words at the top: your name.
Consider them googled.
The question now is what have you been adding to your social media tattoo? How many years have you been adding to it? Is it as carefully crafted as a traditional resume? Or is it a hodge podge of kegger photos, misogynist rants, and random tweets that allude to your life as a disgruntled employee?
The most important thing we all have to remember about social media is that our tweets, posts, and comments come without CONTEXT.
Just because you have 2,100 tweets that are perfectly sane doesn’t mean an occasional F-bomb or a workplace rant will be forgiven by the employer who didn’t have the benefit of watching your stream every day for two years. They only get a quick snapshot and make a dozen assumptions about you based on what they find.
And oh yeah. Just because 99.999% of your Facebook photos are rated PG doesn’t mean a friended co-worker you’re competing with for a promotion won’t come across that “one time at band camp.” And anonymously forward it to your boss. An ill-timed reveal of the office pet’s well-concealed snarkiness or behind-the-scenes indiscretion might make an otherwise adoring boss think twice.
Even though your potential clients and employers are human, too… and they should understand that no one is perfect… they can’t help but come to conclusions about you based on the contents of your social media presence. They don’t have the benefit of context and that’s what makes an innocent remark or photo so dangerous.
Yes, transparency and authenticity are essential to a rewarding online experience because those are the qualities that connect us to people and create real relationships. We should all strive to embrace transparency and be our authentic selves online. But there’s a fine line between being who we are and “letting it all hang out.”
It’s called discretion.
And discretion can live peacefully alongside authenticity and transparency. But it’s an art that takes time to master. And in the meantime there will be tweets we’d like to take back, blog posts we wish hadn’t published, and comments we hope aren’t seen out of context.
Just because we didn’t spend a couple of hours getting a tattoo doesn’t mean there’s not permanent, visible evidence that we don’t always make the best long-term decisions.
And in a lot of ways, social media is even more visible and permanent:
The biggest difference in a tattoo and social media is that a tattoo can be placed in hidden locations, reflecting a higher level of personal discretion and judgment, whereas social media by its very nature is public. Even Facebook or MySpace privacy settings can’t stop someone who’s determined.
Social media is the new tattoo. And no amount of opaque make-up or layers of clothing can conceal it.
What are some words of wisdom you’d share with today’s kids who are embarking on social media? Do you think they’d be able to understand why we talk about the importance of discretion? Or would they think we’re hopelessly lame and old school, just trying to keep them from having fun and expressing themselves?
It’ll be interesting to see what these new tattoos eventually look like. And to what lengths users will go to have them removed.
If you’d like to tweet this post, here’s a trimmed link you can copy and paste: http://tr.im/newtattoo
A quick note of thanks to Wayne Kurtzman (@WayneNH) who first picked up on my “social media is the new tattoo” quote earlier this year and wrote a great post about it. If you have some time, take a look at his post on the topic.
