If my boss could only see me now!
We Regret to Inform You...
Employment Rejection Letters from the Year 2029
My seriocomic take on Delete by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger
"Thank you for your great serio-comic riff. Really enjoyed it!"
-- Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, e-mail to author, January 7, 2009
Welcome to my Web page devoted to hashing out some of the socio-cultural and philosophical issues raised in Mayer-Schonberger's insightful and timely book entitled "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age." This page originally featured only my book-based essay entitled 'We Regret to Inform You', but I soon realized that there were more angles to this story that I wanted to reflect upon. In the interest of navigability, I will update the page index (above) to include in-page links to all such future reflections. So far I've posted two humorous addenda: The first is an "open letter" to the author in which I speculate about a possible defense strategy for the Stacey Sniders of the world (who are turned down for jobs based on the discovery of an online photograph of themselves with which a potential employer took issue). The second addition is an office memo from the human relations department of a fictional university in which I attempt to illustrate (via argument ad absurdum) a potential employer's hypocrisy and presumption in torpedoing a job application based on their subjective reaction to one online photograph. My main concern, however, is not that potential employers may rashly judge a job applicant based on a single photograph, but that such judgments (thanks to the often tenacious and unpurgeable nature of Internet "recall") could increasingly be made on the basis of OLD photographs, ones that were uploaded years ago and of whose continued online existence the applicant may have had no knowledge -- until, that is, the suddenly damning evidence was held against them by a hiring panel that is suddenly (as far as the applicant is concerned) playing the role of the Inquisition (or better yet of Joe McCarthy, armed with a laptop computer).
Brian Quass
July 31, 2010
We Regret to Inform You
Think twice before you upload that photograph of yourself wearing a lampshade at the office Christmas party: The Internet never forgets and you could unwittingly be providing some humorless prospective employer of the future with just the excuse that he or she needs to turn you down for a job:
"I'm sorry, but we don't hire lamp shades -- especially those that guzzle multiple shots of tequila while their friends stand around shouting: 'Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!'"
In fact, forget everything that you know about forgetting: the rules have changed in an age of total digital recall. Time may no longer heal all wounds, whether those wounds were originally self-inflicted or not. It could be "one strike, you're out" from now on when it comes to the personal foibles of your digitized past. Everything you say and do online will be written down (archived) and can and will be used against you in the court of public and/or private opinion, if not today then maybe ten years from now.
Next
The chilling effect of perfect memory alters our behavior. -- Delete
The chilling effect of perfect memory alters our behavior. -- DeleteFor a serious analysis of this newly appreciated downside to Web 2.0 and the hurdles that it seems to place in the way of personal redemption, check out "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. Meanwhile, for a seriocomic demonstration of those same principles, check out the following hypothetical rejection letters from prospective employers of the future, employers who, as you'll see, are more than ready to judge a book by the digital cover that it was wearing 20 years ago.
Rejection Letter 1:
Union Theological Seminary
January 22, 2029
Dear Sir:
Thank you for submitting your application for a residency at Union Theological Seminary. Unfortunately, the results of our recent pro forma background check of your records have given us doubts about the suitability of your temperament for a spiritual vocation. Of particular concern to our board members was a photograph that you apparently posted online on 11-24-2008 as an attachment to a post in a Yahoo! newsgroup about so-called "x-treme fresh-water fishing." While nudity in and of itself is not considered a sin these days according to church doctrine (a position made explicit in Papal Bull "Patesco Quod Deus" by Pope Leo XIII in 1893 and considered by many to be implicit in Pope Paul VI's "Dei Verbum" Bull of 1965), the pursuit of the piscatorial pastime while "in the altogether" smacks of a flippancy that is incompatible with the solemn calling that our novitiates profess. (In fact, I think I speak for the entire board when I repeatedly stroke my jet-black beard and say, "Humph!") Although we would not rush to judgment on the basis of one admittedly old online photograph, the negative impression that it gave us was cemented and even aggravated by the subsequent discovery of a September 2009 YOUTUBE video in which you appear to play a cameo role as a sort of risque mud wrestler, lasciviously plastering ooze on a suit-clad living effigy of politician Creigh Deeds, apparently as a statement of opposition to that latter gentleman's candidature for Virginia state governor in the upcoming November election of that same year. I need not digress upon the evident impropriety of such behavior, particularly when engaged in by a would-be professional custodian of the faith, an individual whose eventual role as heavenly intercessor will no doubt oblige him to excoriate sins that are in themselves far less serious than the ones at which he himself is on record as having laughed so openly, albeit 20 years ago.
His Reverence,
Bishop Botetourt
Rejection Letter 2:
Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli
April 14, 2029
Dear Sir:
Thank you for applying for a position at Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli. We regret to inform you that we cannot employ you at this time, due to the shameful gusto with which you launched into the role of a drunken pirate in a recent short YOUTUBE feature entitled "Captain Blue-Blank" (a performance that we cannot even bring ourselves to identify fully here by name due to the offensively suggestive consonance of its title). Although Jimmy's encourages freedom of expression (we even sponsor a summer Shakespeare festival at a local theater), you so convincingly evoked the snide immorality of your character that we question your ability to sell gasoline and snack treats in the Christian spirit upon which Jimmy's has always prided itself. We realize that the popular Stanislavski method of acting requires the actor to "become" the character that they are playing, and hence much of your believability in your role may be attributed to the standard dramaturgical strategy that you no doubt employed in acting it. Yet you glugged so many bottles of rum from that "dead man's chest" of yours and with such apparent relish, that we are forced to conclude that you were really enjoying yourself on stage: so much so, in fact, that when you drunkenly tottered out onto the wooden plank to force the hog-tied cabin boy into the water by knife-point, we could only assume that you were, indeed, fully drunk at the time (if not on rum, then on raw power) and enjoying every second of your script-licensed reign of terror!
Needless to say, such evocations represent attitudes that are inconsistent with Jimmy's Christian personnel policy (see section 9c re the corporate prohibition of "brazen audacity" in new hires) and are, indeed, pooh-poohed emphatically with the bushiest of our senior staff's blackest of eyebrows (until those latter features often appear positively triangular in aspect, betokening an internal state of such intense agitation and moral repugnance that it doesn't bear thinking on).
Thank you, nonetheless, for your interest in working with Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli and may God bless you with success in your future endeavors.
Jimmy Lee Dingo
VP in charge of morality
Rejection Letter 3:
Atheists of America
July 12, 2029
Dear Madam:
Thank you for applying for the secretarial position at Atheist of America. We regret to inform you that we will not be hiring you at this time. Although your comparatively low 45-wpm typing speed was the principal factor in our decision, we were also concerned by some blatantly religious poetry of yours that you published online in a short-lived e-zine back in 2009. We appreciate the fact that you were probably only 12 or so at the time of these poetic endeavors, but the obviously heartfelt nature of your theocentric avowals therein concerns us as regards the likely staying power of your subsequent conversion to godlessness. We objected particularly to the tiresome sequence of hollow platitudes in your poem entitled "The Groves were God's First Churches," an obvious (if somewhat cockeyed) cannibalization of "A Forest Hymn" by William Cullen Bryant. As philosophically problematic as the notorious original was, you managed to "out-Herod Herod" with the somewhat baffling observation in verse eight that,"God, Your bosom swells like unto a mighty oak." Now, we were fair about this, mind: The entire board of directors here at AOA tried for five whole minutes of complete silence to imagine clearly the image of a swelling oak bosom... but, alas, with no success. This may come as a surprise to you, but oak bosoms do not swell, at least in our experience (although, admittedly, we have yet to consult a licensed arborist on this question). Oh, but then I forgot: God moves in mysterious ways, doesn't He-She-or-It? Oh, yes, of course.
Sigh!
With sincere (albeit Godless) regards,
Tammy Lee Lugnut III
Of course, all of the examples above are (so far, at least) merely fictional scenarios and may be dismissed as unlikely, especially in the utopian minds of those young people who have yet to gaze fixedly into the yawning chasm that we grownups call "the abyss"; but to further prove to such babes in the woods that their online posts and pixels can, indeed, come back to haunt them, I adduce the following list of actual jobs for which I was passed over, merely because my potential employer stumbled over some online photograph of me to which they took exception!
Jobs Lost because of Online Photographs
Pastoral Marriage Counselor
I Does
Don't get any ideas, folks: This picture was taken (illicitly, I might add) during a performance of Tobacco Road at the Klinger Community College Amphitheatre in Belair.
Don't get any ideas, folks: This picture was taken (illicitly, I might add) during a performance of Tobacco Road at the Klinger Community College Amphitheatre in Belair.
Driving Instructor
That's torn it!
I still maintain to this day that I had the car in first gear when it perversely backed up -- of its own accord! -- into this cement column.
I still maintain to this day that I had the car in first gear when it perversely backed up -- of its own accord! -- into this cement column.
Nuclear Plant Operator
Well, THAT can't be good.
This looks more dramatic than it was, folks. It turned out some lazy moron on the previous evening shift had routed the microwave alarm bell through the speaker panel so he'd know when his Swanson Hungry Man Chicken Dinner was done!
This looks more dramatic than it was, folks. It turned out some lazy moron on the previous evening shift had routed the microwave alarm bell through the speaker panel so he'd know when his Swanson Hungry Man Chicken Dinner was done!
Little League Coach
Tough Love
Okay, someone caught me on camera getting perhaps a trifle 'carried away' with the drama of the admittedly critical A's - Cardinals game last summer at Steadman Field -- but you've got to realize, we were down 3-2 in the final (sixth) inning and little Jimmy Dunstead had just lined out to short, even though I had specifically told him in the batter's circle that he needed to bunt this time, not swing: BUNT! (I mean, come on, folks! Do we want to win these games or not?!)
Okay, someone caught me on camera getting perhaps a trifle 'carried away' with the drama of the admittedly critical A's - Cardinals game last summer at Steadman Field -- but you've got to realize, we were down 3-2 in the final (sixth) inning and little Jimmy Dunstead had just lined out to short, even though I had specifically told him in the batter's circle that he needed to bunt this time, not swing: BUNT! (I mean, come on, folks! Do we want to win these games or not?!)
In short: you are (and forever will be) what you post, so think twice before clicking that "upload" icon, folks (though that's admittedly rich advice coming from a prolific online poster such as myself -- but then by the time I realized the dangers inherent in my prolixity, I was already up to my pretty little hard drive in potentially pejorative pixels -- and since my reputation, like my life, can only be lost once, there's little point in leaving off making a fool of myself NOW). Unfortunately, merely laying low these days, however, won't necessarily get you through your digital life with your reputation intact. You don't have to personally upload a compromising photograph of yourself to leave pejorative bread crumbs on line these days: Someone else can always do that for you, even if they have to stoop to doctoring an otherwise benign photograph to do so. Indeed, you don't even have to go online these days to have the past come back to bite you on your analog behind -- as Canadian Andrew Feldmar discovered when a Border Patrol agent barred him from entering the U.S. on the basis of a digitized version of a real-world journal article wherein the nearly 70-year-old psychotherapist confessed to using LSD in the 1960s.
Next
Good information is better than copious information. -- Delete
Good information is better than copious information. -- DeleteTo learn more about this his particular story and the broader implications of a brave new digital world that will no longer "let bygones be bygones," I refer you again to "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age," the new book by Harvard Professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. He'll pick up and run with the same ball that I've just been lazily kicking about the infield in the discussion above.
Meanwhile, do yourself a favor, folks, and stay away from lamp shades at the next office Christmas party!
End of: We Regret to Inform You...
Defense Strategy for Drunken Pirates
To: Professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger
From: Brian Quass
Subject: "Delete"
Dear Viktor,
With regard to the problems caused by the Internet's 'increasingly total' (but still acontextual) recall, I agree that self-established expiration dates for our personal information online could have an important role to play in giving individuals at least some say in what gets remembered about them and for how long it is remembered. As you yourself point out, however, the ultimate answer to such concerns will probably involve a variety of approaches, and it is at this point that I would like to jump into the discussion.
I recently imagined an approach to this problem that I have yet to hear anyone mention, much less champion. The idea came to me after reading your reference to the Borges story about the man who could no longer forget anything ('Funes, the Memorious'). This reference reminded me of another short story by Borges entitled 'The Library of Babel,' wherein a library is imagined that contains not simply every possible book, but every possible permutation of every book, including every possible defense or disputation of every book. It occurred to me that a person interested in their own online privacy could, in theory at least, turn the Internet into a sort of digital Library of Babel, at least as far as their own biography was concerned, by uploading so much erroneous (but generally plausible) data about themselves (along with subtly but importantly modified simulacra of previously uploaded factual information about themselves) that anyone attempting to find a skeleton in their closet would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of red herrings: bits of online data that are all plausible in themselves but which turn out to be mutually exclusive of the facts presented about the self-same person in still other bits of equally plausible online data. Although a would-be blackmailer or snoop might still be able to develop a damaging digital dossier on such a person (through the use of publicly available databases, for instance, or from information gleaned from the sites of the subject's friends and/or enemies), the troublemaker could no longer rely on the investigated individual to incriminate themselves by thoughtlessly uploading diaries, comments, etc., that might eventually appear suspicious to others, especially when read outside of the temporal and textual context in which they were originally published.
One could argue that this plan of purposefully uploading disingenuous (or downright false) autobiographical information could reduce the value of all online information by putting the authenticity of everything digital in doubt -- but I would argue that this would be a good thing, as it could serve as a corrective for the current online user zeitgeist which I believe errs on the side of credulity, if not gullibility. One could also object that this plan of mine would make honest, voluntary online disclosure impossible (in journals, diaries, etc.) since it would cast doubt on the authenticity of all uploaded documents -- but those individuals who choose to have a given piece of their online oeuvre taken at face value will surely find ways to make it clear that the piece in question was not uploaded for the purposes of obfuscation. For starters, they can explicitly state that fact on the relevant pages. They can also upload such voluntary candid info to a site whose publication conditions require content facticity. Also, the mere absence of any online simulacra of a given page, given this new paradigm, would itself imply sincerity on the part of the person who uploaded it. And, if such an individual realizes, maybe years later, that they've uploaded information that now seems to cast them in a bad light, they can (again, in theory) rectify that situation by reuploading the original ill-advised data along with a bevy of similar-looking documents -- which, however, turn out upon closer inspection to involve mutually exclusive facts, making it impossible for a casual reader of "all the evidence" to determine which of the uploaded documents is giving a true picture of the writer (or poster's) thoughts, ideas, and/or actions.
That's my idea, then, to combat (excessive) digital remembering: to create (either personally or with the aid of an IPO-backed start-up launched specifically for this purpose) a purposefully disingenuous Autobiographical Library of Babel on the Worldwide Web, thereby at least partially solving the problem of total recall, not by reducing the amount of information available online, but rather by dramatically increasing it -- only transforming most of it, in the process, into creative fiction.
Thanks for your time!
Brian Quass
Alexandria, Virginia
PS There are shortcomings, of course, to such a plan. For instance, the plan might not be of use to Stacey Snider in having officials overlook her one "drunken pirate" photograph, no matter how many posts that she subsequently might upload with a view toward obfuscating the incident that it depicts. (A picture, unfortunately, is worth more than 1,000 apologias in such a case.) Then again... I don't know Stacey's life story, of course, but let's suppose that she were formerly working as a missionary in Calcutta: She could now perhaps upload a whole album worth of photographs that show her feeding poor children in the slums, and then ask the university to have another look at that offending Myspace page of hers. It would be strange, indeed, if the officials were to subsequently insist that the one pirate photograph of Stacey said more about her probable personality than did the many photographs of her on-site charitable work in Calcutta!
To: All Staff
From: Vice President Fusterby
Subject: Weighing pejorative online photographs in hiring decisions
As you are aware, this office has a policy of Googling potential hirees for photographic evidence of undisclosed moral turpitude in their past. Using this approach, we have already sent three questionable job applicants packing, thus protecting the university's future students from the no-doubt corrupting influence of a drunken pirate, a proselytizing "naturist," and an outwardly demur young lady who in reality attended a Halloween party in 2007 disguised (all too convincingly, alas) as a so-called "pole dancer," complete with leather lasso, Dallas Cowboy short shorts, and a pair of L.E.D.-lit ornamental spurs sparkling about her (admittedly somewhat dainty-looking) ankles. Despite the media firestorm that followed our "outing" of this trio of applicants, the University stands by its policy of evaluating online photographic evidence as part of their pre-employment background checks of teacher wannabes. From a legal standpoint, our Department lawyers are defending our new policy by pointing to the 1968 Supreme Court decision in the case of Harper Valley PTA vs. Mrs. Johnson, which gave wide latitude to the heads of local educational institutions to get on high-horses relative to the perceived moral shortcomings of their individual members.
Mrs. Johnson, as you may recall, was a Harper Valley widowed wife who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High. The PTA had accused the mother of "wearing her dresses way too high" and of "runnin' around with men and goin' wild." They went on to declare that the woman in question should not be "bringin' up your little girl that way." Mrs. Johnson was defiant, however (she had actually worn her miniskirt into the room that night) and denounced the entire board as hypocrites, pointing out that its president (one Bobby Taylor) had repeatedly asked her for a date, that if anyone cared to check her breath, they'd find that PTA Secretary Shirley Thompson had "had a little nip of gin," and that Mr. Harper, the grandson of the school's namesake benefactor, was AWOL that night because he had "stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again." Ignoring what they called her "irrelevant and mean-spirited" counter-charges, the board then voted 8-0 to censure the said Mrs. Johnson, a position that the Supreme Court eventually upheld (though Mrs. Johnson's lawyers later insisted that at least half of the justices "weren't wearing any pants" under their robes when they did so). In short, the Supreme Court gave hiring boards wide leeway to be as unreasonable as they please, without regard to common sense or brotherly feeling.
Despite this vindication from the highest court in the land, our online morality checks are likely to become more difficult to administer in the future, thanks to a new counter-strategy that is increasingly being adopted by our job applicants. Teacher candidates who are aware of some past indiscretion on their part that is (or might be) photographically documented online have now started coming to our interviews armed with a list of still other online photographs that they believe will cast them in a correspondingly positive moral light. Then, if the interviewer confronts them with an embarrassing online photograph from the job candidate's apparently mis-spent youth, the applicant will request that the interviewer also view these additional photographs, claiming that an accurate appraisal of the candidate's moral suitability for the teaching profession can only be made if the negative evidential value of the former is balanced against the positive evidential value of the latter.
As a rule, the pejorative pixels are so damning in any given case that it would take a very angelic slide show indeed to succeed in lowering the red flag that the originally incriminating photograph(s) had raised in the minds of our professionally censorious hiring panels. (If a half-clad job candidate is caught on film cantering sensually about a probably private beach by firelight, good luck finding a photograph inherently moral enough to reverse the tawdry impression that such a spectacle will vouchsafe our panel of straitlaced reviewers -- especially if said applicant has a coy and mincing gait in the photograph in question, tussled but not entirely unruly locks, and is dancing with obviously pre-waxed thighs around a positively rip-roaring bonfire, perhaps even chanting some kind of eldritch liturgy to a seemingly pagan moon!) Still, in order to be fair, we must consider all evidence, so to ensure consistency of treatment and to speed the hiring process under this new paradigm, the Department will soon be issuing guidelines to help our hiring committees determine whether the exculpatory value of an applicant-supplied photograph can be said to adequately counterbalance the moral flaws that the committee found implicit in the original "gotcha" photographs that they had turned up in advance of the job interview.
The complete guidelines will be released by the end of the Month, but the following sample rule should give you an insight into the new "photographic moral calculus" that the university will henceforth be employing when evaluating applicants for teaching positions:
Nakedness: Generally speaking, one photograph depicting nakedness on the part of a job applicant, can be excused (i.e., overlooked in the hiring process) if the applicant can adduce 3 or more photographs depicting themselves in a particularly good moral light (raising money for charity, painting a wall for Habitat for Humanity, answering the telephone during a PBS pledge break -- all while fully clothed, of course). The required number of favorable photographs doubles in the event that there is any whipped cream present in the original problem photograph.
Sincerely,
Wilbur B. Fusterby
"Thank you for your great serio-comic riff. Really enjoyed it!"
-- Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, e-mail to author, January 7, 2009
Welcome to my Web page devoted to hashing out some of the socio-cultural and philosophical issues raised in Mayer-Schonberger's insightful and timely book entitled "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age." This page originally featured only my book-based essay entitled 'We Regret to Inform You', but I soon realized that there were more angles to this story that I wanted to reflect upon. In the interest of navigability, I will update the page index (above) to include in-page links to all such future reflections. So far I've posted two humorous addenda: The first is an "open letter" to the author in which I speculate about a possible defense strategy for the Stacey Sniders of the world (who are turned down for jobs based on the discovery of an online photograph of themselves with which a potential employer took issue). The second addition is an office memo from the human relations department of a fictional university in which I attempt to illustrate (via argument ad absurdum) a potential employer's hypocrisy and presumption in torpedoing a job application based on their subjective reaction to one online photograph. My main concern, however, is not that potential employers may rashly judge a job applicant based on a single photograph, but that such judgments (thanks to the often tenacious and unpurgeable nature of Internet "recall") could increasingly be made on the basis of OLD photographs, ones that were uploaded years ago and of whose continued online existence the applicant may have had no knowledge -- until, that is, the suddenly damning evidence was held against them by a hiring panel that is suddenly (as far as the applicant is concerned) playing the role of the Inquisition (or better yet of Joe McCarthy, armed with a laptop computer).
Brian Quass
July 31, 2010
We Regret to Inform You
Think twice before you upload that photograph of yourself wearing a lampshade at the office Christmas party: The Internet never forgets and you could unwittingly be providing some humorless prospective employer of the future with just the excuse that he or she needs to turn you down for a job:
"I'm sorry, but we don't hire lamp shades -- especially those that guzzle multiple shots of tequila while their friends stand around shouting: 'Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!'"
In fact, forget everything that you know about forgetting: the rules have changed in an age of total digital recall. Time may no longer heal all wounds, whether those wounds were originally self-inflicted or not. It could be "one strike, you're out" from now on when it comes to the personal foibles of your digitized past. Everything you say and do online will be written down (archived) and can and will be used against you in the court of public and/or private opinion, if not today then maybe ten years from now.
Next
The chilling effect of perfect memory alters our behavior. -- Delete
The chilling effect of perfect memory alters our behavior. -- DeleteFor a serious analysis of this newly appreciated downside to Web 2.0 and the hurdles that it seems to place in the way of personal redemption, check out "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. Meanwhile, for a seriocomic demonstration of those same principles, check out the following hypothetical rejection letters from prospective employers of the future, employers who, as you'll see, are more than ready to judge a book by the digital cover that it was wearing 20 years ago.
Rejection Letter 1:
Union Theological Seminary
January 22, 2029
Dear Sir:
Thank you for submitting your application for a residency at Union Theological Seminary. Unfortunately, the results of our recent pro forma background check of your records have given us doubts about the suitability of your temperament for a spiritual vocation. Of particular concern to our board members was a photograph that you apparently posted online on 11-24-2008 as an attachment to a post in a Yahoo! newsgroup about so-called "x-treme fresh-water fishing." While nudity in and of itself is not considered a sin these days according to church doctrine (a position made explicit in Papal Bull "Patesco Quod Deus" by Pope Leo XIII in 1893 and considered by many to be implicit in Pope Paul VI's "Dei Verbum" Bull of 1965), the pursuit of the piscatorial pastime while "in the altogether" smacks of a flippancy that is incompatible with the solemn calling that our novitiates profess. (In fact, I think I speak for the entire board when I repeatedly stroke my jet-black beard and say, "Humph!") Although we would not rush to judgment on the basis of one admittedly old online photograph, the negative impression that it gave us was cemented and even aggravated by the subsequent discovery of a September 2009 YOUTUBE video in which you appear to play a cameo role as a sort of risque mud wrestler, lasciviously plastering ooze on a suit-clad living effigy of politician Creigh Deeds, apparently as a statement of opposition to that latter gentleman's candidature for Virginia state governor in the upcoming November election of that same year. I need not digress upon the evident impropriety of such behavior, particularly when engaged in by a would-be professional custodian of the faith, an individual whose eventual role as heavenly intercessor will no doubt oblige him to excoriate sins that are in themselves far less serious than the ones at which he himself is on record as having laughed so openly, albeit 20 years ago.
His Reverence,
Bishop Botetourt
Rejection Letter 2:
Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli
April 14, 2029
Dear Sir:
Thank you for applying for a position at Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli. We regret to inform you that we cannot employ you at this time, due to the shameful gusto with which you launched into the role of a drunken pirate in a recent short YOUTUBE feature entitled "Captain Blue-Blank" (a performance that we cannot even bring ourselves to identify fully here by name due to the offensively suggestive consonance of its title). Although Jimmy's encourages freedom of expression (we even sponsor a summer Shakespeare festival at a local theater), you so convincingly evoked the snide immorality of your character that we question your ability to sell gasoline and snack treats in the Christian spirit upon which Jimmy's has always prided itself. We realize that the popular Stanislavski method of acting requires the actor to "become" the character that they are playing, and hence much of your believability in your role may be attributed to the standard dramaturgical strategy that you no doubt employed in acting it. Yet you glugged so many bottles of rum from that "dead man's chest" of yours and with such apparent relish, that we are forced to conclude that you were really enjoying yourself on stage: so much so, in fact, that when you drunkenly tottered out onto the wooden plank to force the hog-tied cabin boy into the water by knife-point, we could only assume that you were, indeed, fully drunk at the time (if not on rum, then on raw power) and enjoying every second of your script-licensed reign of terror!
Needless to say, such evocations represent attitudes that are inconsistent with Jimmy's Christian personnel policy (see section 9c re the corporate prohibition of "brazen audacity" in new hires) and are, indeed, pooh-poohed emphatically with the bushiest of our senior staff's blackest of eyebrows (until those latter features often appear positively triangular in aspect, betokening an internal state of such intense agitation and moral repugnance that it doesn't bear thinking on).
Thank you, nonetheless, for your interest in working with Jimmy's Stop-and-Go Mart & Deli and may God bless you with success in your future endeavors.
Jimmy Lee Dingo
VP in charge of morality
Rejection Letter 3:
Atheists of America
July 12, 2029
Dear Madam:
Thank you for applying for the secretarial position at Atheist of America. We regret to inform you that we will not be hiring you at this time. Although your comparatively low 45-wpm typing speed was the principal factor in our decision, we were also concerned by some blatantly religious poetry of yours that you published online in a short-lived e-zine back in 2009. We appreciate the fact that you were probably only 12 or so at the time of these poetic endeavors, but the obviously heartfelt nature of your theocentric avowals therein concerns us as regards the likely staying power of your subsequent conversion to godlessness. We objected particularly to the tiresome sequence of hollow platitudes in your poem entitled "The Groves were God's First Churches," an obvious (if somewhat cockeyed) cannibalization of "A Forest Hymn" by William Cullen Bryant. As philosophically problematic as the notorious original was, you managed to "out-Herod Herod" with the somewhat baffling observation in verse eight that,"God, Your bosom swells like unto a mighty oak." Now, we were fair about this, mind: The entire board of directors here at AOA tried for five whole minutes of complete silence to imagine clearly the image of a swelling oak bosom... but, alas, with no success. This may come as a surprise to you, but oak bosoms do not swell, at least in our experience (although, admittedly, we have yet to consult a licensed arborist on this question). Oh, but then I forgot: God moves in mysterious ways, doesn't He-She-or-It? Oh, yes, of course.
Sigh!
With sincere (albeit Godless) regards,
Tammy Lee Lugnut III
Of course, all of the examples above are (so far, at least) merely fictional scenarios and may be dismissed as unlikely, especially in the utopian minds of those young people who have yet to gaze fixedly into the yawning chasm that we grownups call "the abyss"; but to further prove to such babes in the woods that their online posts and pixels can, indeed, come back to haunt them, I adduce the following list of actual jobs for which I was passed over, merely because my potential employer stumbled over some online photograph of me to which they took exception!
Jobs Lost because of Online Photographs
Pastoral Marriage Counselor
I Does
Don't get any ideas, folks: This picture was taken (illicitly, I might add) during a performance of Tobacco Road at the Klinger Community College Amphitheatre in Belair.
Don't get any ideas, folks: This picture was taken (illicitly, I might add) during a performance of Tobacco Road at the Klinger Community College Amphitheatre in Belair.
Driving Instructor
That's torn it!
I still maintain to this day that I had the car in first gear when it perversely backed up -- of its own accord! -- into this cement column.
I still maintain to this day that I had the car in first gear when it perversely backed up -- of its own accord! -- into this cement column.
Nuclear Plant Operator
Well, THAT can't be good.
This looks more dramatic than it was, folks. It turned out some lazy moron on the previous evening shift had routed the microwave alarm bell through the speaker panel so he'd know when his Swanson Hungry Man Chicken Dinner was done!
This looks more dramatic than it was, folks. It turned out some lazy moron on the previous evening shift had routed the microwave alarm bell through the speaker panel so he'd know when his Swanson Hungry Man Chicken Dinner was done!
Little League Coach
Tough Love
Okay, someone caught me on camera getting perhaps a trifle 'carried away' with the drama of the admittedly critical A's - Cardinals game last summer at Steadman Field -- but you've got to realize, we were down 3-2 in the final (sixth) inning and little Jimmy Dunstead had just lined out to short, even though I had specifically told him in the batter's circle that he needed to bunt this time, not swing: BUNT! (I mean, come on, folks! Do we want to win these games or not?!)
Okay, someone caught me on camera getting perhaps a trifle 'carried away' with the drama of the admittedly critical A's - Cardinals game last summer at Steadman Field -- but you've got to realize, we were down 3-2 in the final (sixth) inning and little Jimmy Dunstead had just lined out to short, even though I had specifically told him in the batter's circle that he needed to bunt this time, not swing: BUNT! (I mean, come on, folks! Do we want to win these games or not?!)
In short: you are (and forever will be) what you post, so think twice before clicking that "upload" icon, folks (though that's admittedly rich advice coming from a prolific online poster such as myself -- but then by the time I realized the dangers inherent in my prolixity, I was already up to my pretty little hard drive in potentially pejorative pixels -- and since my reputation, like my life, can only be lost once, there's little point in leaving off making a fool of myself NOW). Unfortunately, merely laying low these days, however, won't necessarily get you through your digital life with your reputation intact. You don't have to personally upload a compromising photograph of yourself to leave pejorative bread crumbs on line these days: Someone else can always do that for you, even if they have to stoop to doctoring an otherwise benign photograph to do so. Indeed, you don't even have to go online these days to have the past come back to bite you on your analog behind -- as Canadian Andrew Feldmar discovered when a Border Patrol agent barred him from entering the U.S. on the basis of a digitized version of a real-world journal article wherein the nearly 70-year-old psychotherapist confessed to using LSD in the 1960s.
Next
Good information is better than copious information. -- Delete
Good information is better than copious information. -- DeleteTo learn more about this his particular story and the broader implications of a brave new digital world that will no longer "let bygones be bygones," I refer you again to "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age," the new book by Harvard Professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. He'll pick up and run with the same ball that I've just been lazily kicking about the infield in the discussion above.
Meanwhile, do yourself a favor, folks, and stay away from lamp shades at the next office Christmas party!
End of: We Regret to Inform You...
Defense Strategy for Drunken Pirates
To: Professor Viktor Mayer-Schonberger
From: Brian Quass
Subject: "Delete"
Dear Viktor,
With regard to the problems caused by the Internet's 'increasingly total' (but still acontextual) recall, I agree that self-established expiration dates for our personal information online could have an important role to play in giving individuals at least some say in what gets remembered about them and for how long it is remembered. As you yourself point out, however, the ultimate answer to such concerns will probably involve a variety of approaches, and it is at this point that I would like to jump into the discussion.
I recently imagined an approach to this problem that I have yet to hear anyone mention, much less champion. The idea came to me after reading your reference to the Borges story about the man who could no longer forget anything ('Funes, the Memorious'). This reference reminded me of another short story by Borges entitled 'The Library of Babel,' wherein a library is imagined that contains not simply every possible book, but every possible permutation of every book, including every possible defense or disputation of every book. It occurred to me that a person interested in their own online privacy could, in theory at least, turn the Internet into a sort of digital Library of Babel, at least as far as their own biography was concerned, by uploading so much erroneous (but generally plausible) data about themselves (along with subtly but importantly modified simulacra of previously uploaded factual information about themselves) that anyone attempting to find a skeleton in their closet would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of red herrings: bits of online data that are all plausible in themselves but which turn out to be mutually exclusive of the facts presented about the self-same person in still other bits of equally plausible online data. Although a would-be blackmailer or snoop might still be able to develop a damaging digital dossier on such a person (through the use of publicly available databases, for instance, or from information gleaned from the sites of the subject's friends and/or enemies), the troublemaker could no longer rely on the investigated individual to incriminate themselves by thoughtlessly uploading diaries, comments, etc., that might eventually appear suspicious to others, especially when read outside of the temporal and textual context in which they were originally published.
One could argue that this plan of purposefully uploading disingenuous (or downright false) autobiographical information could reduce the value of all online information by putting the authenticity of everything digital in doubt -- but I would argue that this would be a good thing, as it could serve as a corrective for the current online user zeitgeist which I believe errs on the side of credulity, if not gullibility. One could also object that this plan of mine would make honest, voluntary online disclosure impossible (in journals, diaries, etc.) since it would cast doubt on the authenticity of all uploaded documents -- but those individuals who choose to have a given piece of their online oeuvre taken at face value will surely find ways to make it clear that the piece in question was not uploaded for the purposes of obfuscation. For starters, they can explicitly state that fact on the relevant pages. They can also upload such voluntary candid info to a site whose publication conditions require content facticity. Also, the mere absence of any online simulacra of a given page, given this new paradigm, would itself imply sincerity on the part of the person who uploaded it. And, if such an individual realizes, maybe years later, that they've uploaded information that now seems to cast them in a bad light, they can (again, in theory) rectify that situation by reuploading the original ill-advised data along with a bevy of similar-looking documents -- which, however, turn out upon closer inspection to involve mutually exclusive facts, making it impossible for a casual reader of "all the evidence" to determine which of the uploaded documents is giving a true picture of the writer (or poster's) thoughts, ideas, and/or actions.
That's my idea, then, to combat (excessive) digital remembering: to create (either personally or with the aid of an IPO-backed start-up launched specifically for this purpose) a purposefully disingenuous Autobiographical Library of Babel on the Worldwide Web, thereby at least partially solving the problem of total recall, not by reducing the amount of information available online, but rather by dramatically increasing it -- only transforming most of it, in the process, into creative fiction.
Thanks for your time!
Brian Quass
Alexandria, Virginia
PS There are shortcomings, of course, to such a plan. For instance, the plan might not be of use to Stacey Snider in having officials overlook her one "drunken pirate" photograph, no matter how many posts that she subsequently might upload with a view toward obfuscating the incident that it depicts. (A picture, unfortunately, is worth more than 1,000 apologias in such a case.) Then again... I don't know Stacey's life story, of course, but let's suppose that she were formerly working as a missionary in Calcutta: She could now perhaps upload a whole album worth of photographs that show her feeding poor children in the slums, and then ask the university to have another look at that offending Myspace page of hers. It would be strange, indeed, if the officials were to subsequently insist that the one pirate photograph of Stacey said more about her probable personality than did the many photographs of her on-site charitable work in Calcutta!
To: All Staff
From: Vice President Fusterby
Subject: Weighing pejorative online photographs in hiring decisions
As you are aware, this office has a policy of Googling potential hirees for photographic evidence of undisclosed moral turpitude in their past. Using this approach, we have already sent three questionable job applicants packing, thus protecting the university's future students from the no-doubt corrupting influence of a drunken pirate, a proselytizing "naturist," and an outwardly demur young lady who in reality attended a Halloween party in 2007 disguised (all too convincingly, alas) as a so-called "pole dancer," complete with leather lasso, Dallas Cowboy short shorts, and a pair of L.E.D.-lit ornamental spurs sparkling about her (admittedly somewhat dainty-looking) ankles. Despite the media firestorm that followed our "outing" of this trio of applicants, the University stands by its policy of evaluating online photographic evidence as part of their pre-employment background checks of teacher wannabes. From a legal standpoint, our Department lawyers are defending our new policy by pointing to the 1968 Supreme Court decision in the case of Harper Valley PTA vs. Mrs. Johnson, which gave wide latitude to the heads of local educational institutions to get on high-horses relative to the perceived moral shortcomings of their individual members.
Mrs. Johnson, as you may recall, was a Harper Valley widowed wife who had a teenage daughter who attended Harper Valley Junior High. The PTA had accused the mother of "wearing her dresses way too high" and of "runnin' around with men and goin' wild." They went on to declare that the woman in question should not be "bringin' up your little girl that way." Mrs. Johnson was defiant, however (she had actually worn her miniskirt into the room that night) and denounced the entire board as hypocrites, pointing out that its president (one Bobby Taylor) had repeatedly asked her for a date, that if anyone cared to check her breath, they'd find that PTA Secretary Shirley Thompson had "had a little nip of gin," and that Mr. Harper, the grandson of the school's namesake benefactor, was AWOL that night because he had "stayed too long at Kelly's Bar again." Ignoring what they called her "irrelevant and mean-spirited" counter-charges, the board then voted 8-0 to censure the said Mrs. Johnson, a position that the Supreme Court eventually upheld (though Mrs. Johnson's lawyers later insisted that at least half of the justices "weren't wearing any pants" under their robes when they did so). In short, the Supreme Court gave hiring boards wide leeway to be as unreasonable as they please, without regard to common sense or brotherly feeling.
Despite this vindication from the highest court in the land, our online morality checks are likely to become more difficult to administer in the future, thanks to a new counter-strategy that is increasingly being adopted by our job applicants. Teacher candidates who are aware of some past indiscretion on their part that is (or might be) photographically documented online have now started coming to our interviews armed with a list of still other online photographs that they believe will cast them in a correspondingly positive moral light. Then, if the interviewer confronts them with an embarrassing online photograph from the job candidate's apparently mis-spent youth, the applicant will request that the interviewer also view these additional photographs, claiming that an accurate appraisal of the candidate's moral suitability for the teaching profession can only be made if the negative evidential value of the former is balanced against the positive evidential value of the latter.
As a rule, the pejorative pixels are so damning in any given case that it would take a very angelic slide show indeed to succeed in lowering the red flag that the originally incriminating photograph(s) had raised in the minds of our professionally censorious hiring panels. (If a half-clad job candidate is caught on film cantering sensually about a probably private beach by firelight, good luck finding a photograph inherently moral enough to reverse the tawdry impression that such a spectacle will vouchsafe our panel of straitlaced reviewers -- especially if said applicant has a coy and mincing gait in the photograph in question, tussled but not entirely unruly locks, and is dancing with obviously pre-waxed thighs around a positively rip-roaring bonfire, perhaps even chanting some kind of eldritch liturgy to a seemingly pagan moon!) Still, in order to be fair, we must consider all evidence, so to ensure consistency of treatment and to speed the hiring process under this new paradigm, the Department will soon be issuing guidelines to help our hiring committees determine whether the exculpatory value of an applicant-supplied photograph can be said to adequately counterbalance the moral flaws that the committee found implicit in the original "gotcha" photographs that they had turned up in advance of the job interview.
The complete guidelines will be released by the end of the Month, but the following sample rule should give you an insight into the new "photographic moral calculus" that the university will henceforth be employing when evaluating applicants for teaching positions:
Nakedness: Generally speaking, one photograph depicting nakedness on the part of a job applicant, can be excused (i.e., overlooked in the hiring process) if the applicant can adduce 3 or more photographs depicting themselves in a particularly good moral light (raising money for charity, painting a wall for Habitat for Humanity, answering the telephone during a PBS pledge break -- all while fully clothed, of course). The required number of favorable photographs doubles in the event that there is any whipped cream present in the original problem photograph.
Sincerely,
Wilbur B. Fusterby
c.2010 Brian Quass, Alexandria, VA USA