It all begins simply enough. A recommendation from a friend or the insistence of a new acquaintance: "You're not on [name of social networking/dating site here]? You should totally check it out. It's awesome!"
So on an insomnic night or while procrastinating, you go to the recommended site, but you can't really tell much about it without joining. In goes a craftily crafted user name, some basic personal information, and a picture. And now you're in. At first the emails and smiles and winks come to you with wild abandon. You are truly interacting with people that you would not have otherwise.
And then you get busy. Stop visiting the site. You still have "Mean Girls" listed as your favorite movie (granted
maybe it still is). You're listed as single, but you're in a
relationship (or vice versa). You forget passwords. And your profile languishes.
When time allows, instead of visiting the neglected site, you check out the "newest, most bestest" site now being recommended by another friend. Suddenly, you have a profiles on a multitude of sites.
You are over-networked.
Your googled name results in a plethora of results that no longer represent the current you. People talk about that picture of you online that looks nothing like you. Your age, if manually entered is a few years younger than you truly are. People are beginning to think that you are a fraud. A liar. A deceiver! If something happens today (someone saves your life in the subway, Dakota Fanning gives you a bump) and you are suddenly sought out by the media. Outdated information is what they find.
What to do? Luckily the weather outside will be frightful this weekend (in the Northeast at least) giving you the chance to clean up your act:
- Google your own name and any "handles" that you tend to use (ie SlingBoy69).
- Search your e-mail for e-mail with words such as member, username, and password.
- From the above, go to the sites for which you have representation.
- Make a ten-second decision whether you want to continue on "VampireFreaks.com" or not.
- Make a mental list of what sites you are continuing and harrow them down to three.
The key is to be in control of your online presence before chance or circumstance does that for you.
