The Social Networking DANGERS - Make no mistake - What happens on the web Stays on the web – And affects you OFFLINE

The internet is serious business. We used to think of it as a place of entertainment but its much more now..

When we're young we do a lot of things we regret. We don't stop doing this our whole lives but in our adolescence we make a lot of mistakes we (hopefully) don't repeat.

When were young adults we make a lot of mistakes too, in our 20's we find life to be both a challenging experience and the best years of our lives. Again we make mistakes, but their either forgotten or forgiven. A few people hold grudges but not thousands, and they don't tell enough people to really impact your life.

Enter the matrix

When you spend time on the internet you may spend most of it in email, and a little bit surfing websites, or purchasing things from online versions of department stores.

BUT if you spend a great deal of time on the internet, chatting, posting to forums, emails, building websites or even develop and sell a product, this my friend is a whole new ball of wax.

The internet like Vegas has a slogan "What happens on the internet stays on the internet" only this Vegas is not limited to one location, its open to every single house on the planet, every coffee shop, anywhere one can get internet access they can access your internet babbling, mistakes, and ranting, rages, and yes the good things too.

The internet is the physical manifestation of "Word of mouth" and it has an echo that never wanes.. If you yell into this grand canyon, the echo doesn't stop it just keeps bouncing and even comes back and hits you like your caught in a sonic sand storm in the middle of the desert!

What I find particularly disturbing is that if someone decides to spray paint your name on a couple of forums, this cold turn out to become your reputation, even if it wasn't something you did or said. What compounds this is, let's say you went into a forum, the first one you ever used actually, for me personally it was brainwave generator. Let's say you didn't realize the repercussions of your actions and started to become annoyed at a bunch of people there and lost your cool and started ranting.

When you rant for several pages it doesn't even matter that you used professional language, spoke with distinction or formatted your sentences perfectly... A rant is a rant and if it annoys people it becomes a fight, a fight that is recorded for eternity. Note that the part of the fight that will be noticed is not the leading up to it, not the part where you were justified if you were, but the part where you snapped in controlling yourself, where you ranted with such anger and distain that you really looked like a jerk.

Imagine if walking down the street your worst moment of losing your cool ever was tattooed permanently on your face, even when you cooled down and became rational again, mended your ways and removed yourself from the bad stimulus.. How do you think people would see you? As the nice guy you are? Nope.

This may be a bit too drastic, but realize when people get to know you online you may be perfect at first but the moment you lose your cool, and just happen to do so in a public forum, they will Google your name and all those ridiculous rants you wish you could erase, will resurface again and again, and will define who you are to those who don't know you personally!

How does the fight gain a footage?

The users as you know will bite back and a forum war takes place where all members old an new start in on it. What really bites is that years later you'll be in a calm place, this tiff that took place is long gone but some new person on the forum will see the rants and reignite the fight because they don't pay attention to the time space continuum. Realize your words are still keywords that Google and other search engines will index. If you ranted professionally this could be worse as those words will typically be searched for by professionals and you could end up getting an accidental hit on a search engine of your boss! Your new boss at that!?

Your boss then calls you up and asks you to come in so he can show you something and he prints out the ranting of but two years ago that you thought was long in the past.. you even laughed at yourself for letting people get to you... but no your not laughing are you?

The other thing that starts a bad chain of infectious posts is a new person joining the forum may be looking up a specific string of keywords and comes across your rant, again not the part leading up to it but the actual rage words. They then get offended (Not knowing the whole story) and start to post things to you about what you said.

You may find yourself reading this and are in a somewhat compromising position because your balls just got handed to you once again and if you don't respond you know that someone else will and will have the wrong idea. What to do?

The truth is you shouldn't respond at all. Why? Because in not responding your not admitting to or denying anything, sure people have their opinions but a lot of people will realize the date on the post and ignore it, at the very least you could just mention the date and nothing else, i.e. enter the forum and say that was a long time ago, we've since kissed and made up, but I appreciate your interest.

You could explain to the guy/girl personally (privately) the situation but keep it out of the public eye, for if you respond to it in many people's eyes its refreshing the post. Again why? Because when you respond to a post a lot of the time the new post (response) ends up at the top of the heap with the fresh date the other one right below it with the old date buried. People will read the first date but ignore the second. Your best bet if you do respond is to make clear the dates and nothing more, say it was settled and humbly admit you were wrong..

But under no circumstances do you respond to the persons displaced rage for you! The rules are the same in life.. the consequences online are worse however and lasting should you take the unenlightened route.

Now if the guy who spray painted some rants about you on forums, built a website to humiliate you on a free site (so the page can never expire really) then you compound that with ranting and raving on the internet, you will just reinforce his views, even if your ranting and raving happened 6 years ago.

I made all of the mistakes I'm talking about here so this hub is being published in hopes that none of you (if it's not too late) make the same mistakes I did. They say the best revenge is success, well the only real way out of this mistake is to have a lot of success and hope your rankings of your online presence are better than the ones contaminating you. If for example your name put into a search engine pulls up the dirty laundry links to your past, you must find a way to build A LOT of articles that bring up your name.

One way to do this is to sign up to several sites like hubpages, write articles, to forums only sites, but make sure you use your first and last name as it appears in Google with the top ranking of all those articles. This will eventually bury those links beneath pages and pages of good stuff. When that other stuff comes up it won't impact you as harshly. You can even write a bunch of articles about the events that transpired, stating humbly how you lost your cool or something and those will be seen before the others and could dissolve their meaning.. But don't count on it.

If its just one site or someone's plastered a web page (one) with links to all your Tierney years ago, you can work this like cleaning up your credit record and try to have it removed. I say hire a hacker to break into that page and erase it personally *smile* they do it all the time.. lol.. (I'm kidding). An interesting way to do it however is to create a clone page but change the end links, use the same freeweb server he used or what not and see if this helps :)

Let's back up a bit

In my generation we just got introduced to computers about 15 years or so ago, so most of my life I couldn't really do much damage locally, at least nothing that would come back to haunt me today. But I feel sorry for these new generations (Post computer era) because they can do plenty. A picture gets leaked to the web, a forum post of ignorant ranting, or rage, a conversation on a members only forum that still posts publicly (but people don't think it does), these are things that can come back and byte (pun) you in the digital and real world azz.

Truth is what ever you put online is going to stay there forever. It's not just about where you put it being seen on a Google search. It's about the amazing copy paste feature prominent in all operating systems and browsers. You post it to the forum and that's bad enough, that alone will follow you forever. They Google your name and your toast, ever time. Your name becomes your liability! But say you find a way to get that post off that forum... you bow your head in relief.. Whew... it's gone. That was close.

But really, is that the end? Nope. Chances are if you upset someone they copy pasted it somewhere else to show what a jerk you are/were and that got copied and sent through an email forwarded to a million people after a couple days of check these idiots out, emails. It becomes a funny email about morons and the ridiculous things they say, there's your name on the bottom of item 184.

Web 2.0: Term describing the new social networking evolution

With Web 2.0 () information is being propagated at staggering numbers into bulletins, blogs, and more instead of just email to one person its being broadcasted to the world at large!

That to someone is so funny that they post it on their blog and others see it and copy it to their myspace where it is now being seen by their personal traffic and public blog searches on the 300 million user network. Of those people your ranting is added to more that 400,000 blogs and other areas and now. How you going to remove this ranting now? This may seem a bit much but trust me depending on what you say and who you piss off, this is no exaggeration. Pictures especially are said to propagate into the millions of copies within HOURS of being posted to a popular site. ESPECIALLY if someone caught you embarrassing yourself at a party on their cell phone camera or in a short movie uploaded to Youtube.com!

This takes even the offline activities to big brother status. With so many cameras with video recording and audio too, this makes the entire world a place of potential embarrassment for everyone. Getting drunk and having a night on the town is no longer a safe bet if you make an ass of yourself in front of someone who is armed and ready to take action shots!

Get your butt kicked at a bar? Your going to find yourself embarrassed beyond words as that video will not only post but will be propagated world wide and impossible to make disappear.. If you think Youtube videos can't be ripped edited and reposted think again!

What really sucks is the generation just before computers not being aware of this phenomenon until probably 10 years ago, or for many just recently.. as they ranted and raved on forums thinking their was no lasting impression this would have, after all it's a members only site anyway.. Well.. Members only to post, but anyone can enter to READ!!!

Then as the entire world was encapsulated with internet and connectivity by devices, if you're an entrepreneurial type you will discover that ranting you did as a kid on that forum will become your liability when you try to start a web presence.. Especially if you used your real name in any part of your posts or screen name! Even if you used an alias, you may have used that alias somewhere else and slipped when you signed the forum post with your name, now the name on the post is part of the keywords crawled and your alias is no longer protecting your identity!

Life is about learning, its why were here. There are no easy or hard lessons just lessons. Hard or easy is relative to your ability to learn, grow and especially adapt. The more you learn and integrate the easier things become to you because you have a foundation, experience to fall back on and you learn not to repeat your mistakes. Some things however are not so easily learned and so we struggle making these things to us in our struggle apparent by the pain they inflict on us.

Compassion for others mistakes is the most vital thing you can offer others. It's also good karma because you can bet you too will make mistakes and really learn your lesson, but nothing is emptier, more crippling than to realize your mistake and to be refused the right to redeem yourself. The internet is such a creature, one not of good or evil, judgmental or favoritism, it is just a recording of your every expression within its arena, and the judgments or favoritism reside solely in the human equation. It's a permanent impression of you, especially if you live online more than off. The more activities you participate in the more likely you can be easily accessed by even a newbie who knows how to use keywords and Google.com!

Their was a book released a couple years back called Google hacks. It shows people how to utilize the full power of the search engine. The capabilities of this monster are mind boggling. I'd say that 98% of the people who use Google have no clue to how to do even half the things its capable of. Hackers use Google because of its features. Do you have your resume on your web page hosting site but not public, hidden in a folder locked by a script that requires a password? Safe right? Nope. Hackers awhile back learned how to find ANY file on the web even unpublished files. If it resides on a server and that server is connected to the internet and that document is accessible at all via the web, it can be found and taken. Some hackers stole entire data bases of credit card numbers that were on a server not even connected directly to the web, the computer it was on was linked via an intranet office network but ultimately was connected to the web, hackers using JUST Google search engines found, and downloaded this data base. It made the news. Google hacks is a book with over 400 pages of tips and tricks, and It looks so technical I swear it's a book on code like C++ or perl. Its truly intimidating! This means that if it can be crawled it can be found, and if it resides in a folder online published live or not, and theirs no script to tell the "bot" or "spider" not to go any further, then your taking a risk putting it there.

Another interesting thing that was happening before the technology got more sophisticated was when you would buy a digital ebook music etc.. from a site they would then give you access to a link to download that product. The link would expire after 3 downloads but was live for every ip address you just needed to know where it was. Google gave people the power (unintentionally of course) to find these products and download for free because of the redundancy of the product url's tail phrase "download". They would do a Google search for keywords in the product description and the word "download" and their was more to it than this, their were ways of formatting the search string to bypass certain conditions and to really narrow the search. Its fascinating and the book is still valid, I think most of these still work.

So don't think just because your data is being "stored" on a "storage back up server" online but not published or even password protected but not encrypted, that it is not vulnerable. Actually a good hacker could use Google to find it then bypass the encryption with an other program called telnet. But this is not a hacking hub so I'll leave it at that. I know little about the mechanics of hacking but I understand the ramifications of thinking your data is safe online.

Between the posts, the Google search engines ability to find anything online, and all the multimedia posting sites and opportunities.. You have to really watch your back and be careful. If someone some how sneaks in and takes a shot of you naked, then puts it on the web, you may be able to get them arrested but you will never get rid of the picture.. especially if you're a hottie *wink*. You must be careful not to screw this up because if you do, and even if you learn, there is little if any recourse. Protect your privacy, doesn't undress by an open window even if your 30 stories up, chances are someone could have a telescoping camera and you'd never know you were published! Till you got that opportunity to get a job and the company took drastic measures to scour the web for anything incriminating on you to check to see if you were a safe risk..

Everything you post, say, or do on the internet is accessible from anywhere especially if your name is on it. Four or Five years ago I was new to the forum posting environment. Now I admit I had much less self control of my emotions back then, for one because I didn't realize my rants were accessible via Google.com, or anyone not a member of that forum, but the truth is anyone Googling your name can find all of your activities online where your name appeared anywhere on it, including in your signature, as your signing your post (like you'd do an email) and so on.

If in the modern day you were to lose your cool again in a forum you will find that all that stuff will resurface, its inevitable and it will become your current impression, especially if you annoyed a bunch of people. They won't see that it happened over 4 years ago and that you have since matured, but if you ranted just like you did then have you? Hard to say, but Judgment is the plague of most peoples hearts. They don't see what you meant, what your intentions were, they see what you do, what you did, and how people responded to that, and if they resonate especially, they will judge you not for your current crimes, even if it had been 4 years since you even entered a forum with rants, they see you as a continuum of a ranting personality.

You can't really blame them, for all they know about you is what you do online. In real life people get to know the person, they learn that your good or bad and you build up an emotional bank account balance with them, then your mistakes, even if they learn you did them in the past, aren't forged into your current position.

There is a way however to fix this provided you don't repeat your actions.

• 1. NEVER rant negatively to or about anyone in any forum. If you do, no matter who it's to, the rest of them will see you as this person who's rude insensitive or mean. Most however will forgive if it stops, nobody's perfect. But if you do it, and mind you it doesn't matter if its justified, because they may not share your distain for this person(s) and so your viewed as being unreasonable (especially if they themselves like this person and can't comprehend your animosities with them). Rule of thumb: DON'T RANT ONLINE. The rule applies: IF YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING GOOD TO SAY DON'T SAY ANYTHING AT ALL. IF YOU DO THE WEB WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU. Sorry for the caps but this is an important point you need to realize can make or break your reputation, especially if your money making venture are on the web!
• 2. Be Polite always. When your disposition is polite people accept you, even if they run into your past ranting this wont matter, as they've never witnessed this side of you and can forgive that, or may even say its not you. At the very least you have to give these people the chance to see your polite and dominate personality (not dominating dominate) which is kind and caring. Once you've had plenty of time to do this a rant her or there or even a blow up (which again I don't recommend) will not appear to characterize you but your actions at this time (only). In real life this can happen much faster but online you have to put in the time.
• 3. Put in your time. You don't have the same rules online as off. For this people believe their invincible online, no one can touch them, they can say what they please and its just online. But what if one day you want to start an online writing campaign to blog for cash? What if you start a company with a web presence? All your ranting will destroy your credibility no matter how credible you are now, people will see who you were as who you are. The internet is outside the time space continuum, even though its time stamped. Perception is reality and not everyone is seeing what is really there. In real life you can see people age as a clue to this is now that is then. Online the article, ranting posts, website, are as current and youthful as they were when they were launched!

My Story:

When I was about 29 I entered into the field of brain science and hypnosis. I was interested in how the mind worked and was currently looking for a cure for my insomnia. I learned how make music in a way that both put you into an intense and instant "high" meditation and how to link it to self help and subliminal technologies. I was brand new to the industry, but not to brain science. I'd been studying psychology and brain science for as long as I could remember.

When I saw this forum I entered in hopes of learning how to more professionally create music and develop the science of brain wave entrainment. I discovered that in this forum that people were opinionated and a bit rough around the edges but this is a given when you put a bunch of intelligent intellectuals in the same room together. It becomes a synergy of information, a wealth of insight and yet a volatile mix should someone cast forth their opinions and try to force them upon others.

In 2004 when I was actively using this forum I learned a lot, but I was also very sensitive to others personalities. I didn't realize what I was saying/typing would forever stain me, and come back to byte (spelled right it's a pun) me in the keester later.

I admit I was a bit harsh at times but realize I never had any true intention of harming or defaming anyone, I was just defending myself (in my eyes) and expressing my opinion. Truth is this is one of my bad habits, that to this day I realize I still need to work on. The art of humility (there's a new hub).

When I figured out how the technologies worked, and I'm a very quick study, I put things together rather quickly and learn fast, I developed my CD's/product and they did some amazing things, but other people in this forum didn't believe I could possibly go from Green to Bling, in a year. I think if you study relentlessly, you can accomplish anything, and time constraints are removed by the vast information available online. You no longer have to go to college, or a book store/library and check out books, learn things the hard way to figure out a science. I realize that you do need experience, trial and error and my product wasn't perfect right off the bat, but it did work, it did surpass some others similar in the industry and it did what I said it did. Many people chose to use this as an attack formation when my ranting on the subject whatever it was, got out of hand.

This is an example of how the internet doesn't distinguish business from pleasure. I ranted in that forum but I also contributed heavily to the members and information seekers in there. I did A LOT of research on the relevant topics discussed, and if I didn't know how to answer I went out on a journey to find the answers they sought. I tried to be an active and helpful part of the community and if you look at the posts I put up as a whole you'd see that although my ranting was pretty ridiculous in about 20 or so posts, the other 400 I posted over that year were not only helpful but I got a lot of thanks for my efforts.

In that particular forum after the first 5 months my goal was to send traffic to my site and sell my CD's by offering my help in exchange I figured I'd get a few people willing to check me out. I write long informative posts from research (a lot like hubs but longer) on a topic like subliminal, and I think I may have over promoted myself there, so that triggered some upset in the others who felt I was spamming them under the guise of informative posting but to me that's not a bad thing, if a TV commercial shows you entertainment value you don't usually care that it was a commercial. If it made you laugh so hard you went to Youtube to acquire a copy of it to see it and pass it to your friends then that advertisement is now going to help the company and their product while giving away great value (Geicko insurance commercials are great for this!)

I since learned not to advertise in forums and the last 3 months in that forum I didn't piss anyone off. I had about ¾ of the active members in the forum on my side, they appreciated my efforts, but the other ¼ didn't, and were relentless in their pursuit to damage my reputation so I'd leave. The last 3 months I didn't even get flack from them but decided to end my brainwave generator forum experience and find a new hobbies.. My company got more successful so I spent more time doing that.

That was 3 years ago and I hadn't had any problems since that forum, in fact I have made amazing strides to learn from my mistakes, I amassed a company, honed it into an impressively complex (impressive to me) company, and life was good.

Later when I closed my company and went into learning to write to make my living (which is around when I found hubpages) My ranting in the forums at brainwave generator came back to haunt me. People judged me ignorantly by what was said 4 years ago.. without even checking it out thouroughly to see the other 400 posts, but thats how it goes. My point here is be careful what you say online, it will ALWAYS resurface and at the worst possible time and in the wrong contex.. and you'll try to fight it but people will not budge on their initial imression of the data they read. Shame on them, yes, but shame on you for not watching what you write online!

Good luck!