The focus of this reflection is how my perspective of my digital presence has grown since I took my first steps online. I will explore themes of permanence, reputation, and control. I have learned that we, as digital citizens, must be intentional and thoughtful—as early as possible—in how we engage with anything online. This may sound simple, but it can be a difficult formula to perfect.
As I reflected on my Digital Identity/Digital Presence Plan, I realized that I have been an internet contributor and content creator since Saskatchewan first went online in 1995. My family household was fortunate enough to participate in an early trial of internet access in the province’s Crown-run telecom company, SaskTel. I have been online for 29 years.
It didn’t take much content consumption to realize that I wanted to create content of my own. Hunkered down in front of a Pentium-powered Windows box running a 28.8k modem, with a copy of HTML for Dummies next to the keyboard, I built my first website on GeoCities. Of course, it wasn’t anything groundbreaking: basic HTML crowned with a “Best viewed with Netscape Navigator” badge. But, I was online; I had become an internet contributor and content creator.
Life Online
Labrecque, Markos, and Milne (2011) noted that “people both explicitly and implicitly brand themselves using content they place online” (p. 37). My personal websites have always been designed with intent: to present myself to the world, to potential collaborators or employers. Before the hyper-connected and hyper-socialised Web 2.0, it was pretty simple. Things took longer. Our reactions were tempered by the technology through which we engaged. We had to be very intentional.
There is a classic Canadian trope of writing an angry letter when something really rubs you the wrong way. This is also a very intentional act. It has to be: you have to find your stationery, angrily scratch out your opinion, stuff it into an envelope, walk all the way to the post office, buy a stamp, and mail it away. There is always a strong chance that somewhere through the process, you’d find yourself not caring enough to continue. It’s a built-in cooldown period. Email has quickened the exercise but the cooldown period still has a fighting chance. Web 2.0 technologies seem to have sidelined the cooldown period entirely, in favour of instant publishing of social-media posts and comment sections. It’s out there, for the world to see, before you could have even found your stationery.
As Kelly Schryver asks, in her article Who Are You Online? Considering Issues of Web Identity, (2013, para. 18): “How well can you be Googled now?” Googling one’s own name (aka egosurfing) is an important (and sometimes concerning) exercise. It can remind you what you’ve posted online, while revealing what others have posted about you. This was the first step in analysing my own digital presence.
Permanence
GeoCities went permanently offline on October 26, 2009 (Wikipedia). All those ‘digital neighbourhoods’ became pixel dust. The product of my countless hours of crafting my HTML skills was gone. But I hadn’t updated it for about a decade anyway; I had moved on and forgotten about it.
The Wayback Machine doesn’t forget. It is an Archive.org initiative that was established in 1996 with the aim of “archiving the Internet itself” (The Internet Archive) Even if one scrubs every digital trace that is under their control, there exists this entity whose sole purpose is to preserve a copy forever. The Wayback Machine maintains a GeoCities archive, too. Somewhere in that archive, there may exist a copy of my first website.
By the year 2000, I had registered my first domain name and published a website with more modern tooling and levelled-up skills. The Wayback Machine still holds a copy of the second version of that website, dating back to September 29, 2001. Is there anything incriminating there? No, but I’d bet someone will dig it up to check, if I ever decide to get into politics. It’s a bit unnerving, knowing that a 23-year-old copy of that website is still sitting there, available to the public. The internet never forgets.
During my digital presence analysis, I found that my long-dormant Flickr account is still accessible. There isn’t much there—I posted my last photo in 2010—but I still thought it would be worth closing the account. I can’t. I can no longer access it. Until Flickr goes the way of GeoCities, my dormant photo stream sits like an abandoned gas station on the side of the information super highway.
Politicians have been taken down by comments posted online that were captured by users saving screenshots (McKelvey et al, 2018). Businesses have suffered damages due to owners or employees saying unsavoury things online (Toy, 2022). I sometimes wonder what ugly digital breadcrumbs I’ve left behind that could come back to bite me. On the modern internet, the path from thought to posted comment is very quick—and easily reactionary.
Whether it’s archived old content, content over which we’ve lost control, or content that was never under out control, permanence is a real concern. With everything I publish or transmit online, it is best to consider it to be permanent and public.
Reputation
A person’s reputation is so often attached to what they do for a living. For 20 years, much of my online presence has framed me as a web developer. Now, I am in a career transition, analysing how I should reshape my digital presence. Our lives have stages: jobs, relationships, attitudes. It makes sense that our digital identity/digital presence reflects that as well. But a permanent record of a previous phase can haunt a person.
I try to bring authenticity to my online presence. I want both my online and offline personas to closely match. It’s a work in progress. True authenticity reveals some of our flaws and scars. It shows our mistakes, too, regardless of how embarrassing they are. Ask the Prime Minister, or a “handful of standup comedians who have faced some level of ‘cancelation’ fuelled by internet outrage” (Rolling Stone, 2023). A single action can transform an entire reputation.
Our online reputations matter now more than ever. Potential employers evaluate candidates’ digital presence as part of their hiring consideration. Black’s research found that 69% of employers have rejected an applicant based on content found online (2012). It’s not limited to business, either. According to a survey conducted by a background-check company, 77% of people research potential dates online before meeting them in person (Hellebarde, n.d.).
Authenticity is important. Reinecke & Trepte’s research found that people who showed greater fluctuation in how they present themselves in different contexts had negative relations to anxiety, stress, and depression (2014). How, then, do I balance authenticity with permanence and reputation? I haven’t yet found a clear answer.
I have a wide variety of interests and things I am involved in. As such, I have appeared online in a multitude of ways. Some are pretty standard. Some could be considered edgy—even unprofessional—by some. Like it or not, they are all authentically me.
In 2020, I made a wacky, pandemic-inspired music video that had a burst of viral success. Do I unpublish it, for fear that it may cast me in an unprofessional light to a potential employer with a different sense of humour? What about my team’s R-rated 48-hour movie-making challenge submission that won the CUFF Viewers’ Choice award in 2010? These creations are authentically me—and I am proud of them—but they are certainly not for everyone and could be poorly suited to some contexts. I have been wrestling with this.
Some content that impacts a person’s reputation is created by someone else. Websites that publish user-generated content without a fact-checking protocol have plagued people’s lives for years. Content aggregators that scrape various internet sources to compile clumsy profile pages pollute my digital presence. I don’t visit teacher-rating websites, for both the preservation of my mental health and a lack of interest in revenge content. After seeing two people I’ve met appear on the now-defunct gossip/revenge site The Dirty, I maintain a healthy paranoia toward appearing on those types of sites. Even if I were to (or have already), there isn’t much I could do.
Control
As I have wrestled with the permanence of my digital presence and how its features impact my reputation, I have thought a lot about control. Like my Flickr account, I do not have full control over my digital identity/digital presence. I can make every effort to maintain my digital footprint to my standards, but some of it is simply out of my hands.
What I can control is what content I create—and where I create it. This may ring familiar to some as the idea of circles of influence, concern, and control (Covey, 1989). It is the secular version of the Serenity Prayer, by Reinhold Niebuhr: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Figure 1.
Circles of Influence, Concern, and Control
Note. Circles of Influence, Concern, and Control. Adapted from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by S. R. Covey, 1989, Free Press. Copyright 1989 by Stephen R. Covey.
The American Psychological Association recommends taking a cooldown period when anger is at risk of driving your reaction (American Psychological Association, n.d.). This is good advice for anyone who finds themself on the internet. I have started doing this more intentionally in the last year: step away from the keyboard. Usually, by the time I’ve walked to the kitchen, I no longer care about what bothered me.
Those angry letters have the potential to permanently impact our reputation. It is up to us to control our digital presence as much as possible, because “if you do not manage your own brand, the power is given to someone else” (Labrecque, Markos, and Milne, 2011).
Realigning
How do I realign my digital presence while maintaining a balance of professionalism and authenticity? I am actively facing the personal/institutional tension and finding an authentic balance. There is some online content that I have decided to remove, for the sake of professional appearances, and it felt odd.
I am a teacher, student, developer, designer, actor, lifter, spouse, musician, creator, birder, woodworker, tinkerer, and brain-tumour survivor. I have opinions, want to engage in political discourse, fight against tyranny, and denounce genocide. “I contain multitudes” (Whitman, 1855). I think my digital identity/digital presence should responsibly reflect that.
I think it will largely, then, come down to voice: what I consider to be a main component of digital identity. Given what we have discussed here, I will call it authentic voice. I can still wear different hats, create, share, engage, and contribute. If I consistently do so respectfully and authentically, I need not fear permanence, reputation or lack of control.
Conclusion
Evaluating our digital identity/digital presence should be a continual process. We shouldn’t need to obsess over it, but maybe one last check before you post something is like checking the mirror before you leave the house. Is my hair okay? Is there anything in my teeth? Is this how I want to present myself? Wait, there is something in my teeth.
Be a raving paranoid onstage; nothing is taken at face value, nothing is tossed aside.
Del Close
In 1995, I never imagined that my digital identity/presence would become so tightly coupled to the offline world—that something I did on the internet could have such an immediate real-world consequence. At the time, it almost felt like an extension of a computer game: a virtual world in which I could spend some time at my leisure, then disconnect from and return to my real life. No longer; it’s all the same world. We doesn’t disconnect from it; our digital presence is our presence.
Renowned improv-theatre coach, Del Close, is credited with having said “Be a raving paranoid onstage; nothing is taken at face value, nothing is tossed aside” (as cited in various discussions on improvisational theatre). It was his approach to encourage active listening and acutely engaging with scene partners and the collaboratively-created work. It serves as good advice for a healthy digital presence. Be a raving paranoid online; nothing is taken at face value, nothing is tossed aside, and nothing is forgotten.
References
American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Strategies for controlling your anger. In APA Topics. Retrieved June 5, 2024, from https://www.apa.org/topics/anger/strategies-controlling
Black, S. L., & Johnson, A. F. (2012). Employers’ use of social networking sites in the selection process. The Journal of Social Media in Society, 1(1). Retrieved from https://thejsms.org/index.php/JSMS/article/view/2
Brown, A. (2023, June 1). How disgraced comedians like Chris D’Elia and Dane Cook are attempting to rebrand. Rolling Stone. Retrieved June 5, 2024, from https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/disgraced-comedians-threads-rebrand-chris-delia-dane-cook-ellen-degeneres-1234784726/
Close, D. (n.d.). Quote referenced in multiple discussions on improvisational theater. Exact source unknown.
Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Free Press.
Hellebarde. (n.d.). Learn when investigating anyone before a primary go out is obviously a terrible idea. Retrieved June 5, 2024, from https://hellebarde.com/learn-when-investigating-anyone-before-a-primary/
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Labrecque, L. I., Markos, E., & Milne, G. R. (2011). Online Personal Branding: Processes, Challenges, and Implications. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 25(1), 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2010.09.002
McKelvey, F., Côté, M., & Raynauld, V. (2018). Scandals and screenshots: Social media elites in Canadian politics. Political elites in Canada: Power and influence in instantaneous times, 204-22.
Niebuhr, R. (n.d.). The Serenity Prayer.
Reinecke, L., & Trepte, S. (2014). Authenticity and well-being on social network sites: A two-wave longitudinal study on the effects of online authenticity and the positivity bias in SNS communication. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 95-102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.07.030
SaskTel. (1995). SaskTel 1995 Annual Report. SaskTel. https://digital.library.mcgill.ca/images/hrcorpreports/pdfs/6/638951.pdf
Schryver, Kelly. (2013, February 5). Who Are You Online? Considering Issues of Web Identity. The New York Times Learning Network. https://archive.nytimes.com/learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/guest-post-who-are-you-online-considering-issues-of-web-identity/
Toy, A. (2022, July 6). Transphobic response to Canmore Pride donation request sparks apology, swell of support. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/9017978/transphobic-response-canmore-pride-request-for-donation-sparks-apology-support/
Whitman, W. (1855). Song of Myself. In Leaves of Grass. (J. Wilson & Son, 1892).
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, April 27). GeoCities. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved June 5, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities
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