The Harvard Hooligan occasionally writes a column for his home newspaper, The Denver Post, when he’s not making dumb YouTube videos. The latest features his dearly beloved roommates:
Welcome to Life in the Fishbowl – Denver Post, Jan 11.
“Why can’t I see your Facebook profile?” my mom asks when I quickly close my laptop.
“Because you’re my mother,” I wisely remind her.
But if I had more wisdom, I might consider the fact that school administrators, employers, advertisers and strangers who are more tech-savvy than my mother can easily access my online profile and pictures.
Indeed, such online snoops found compromising photos of President-Elect Barack Obama’s speechwriter caressing a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton and college kids partying in the Colorado governor’s mansion simply by perusing Facebook.
But my generation doesn’t care much for privacy. We have grown up watching reality TV shows in which participants proudly volunteer to have cameras follow them for 24 hours a day. We cheer as the most intimate and incriminating moments of people’s lives are captured for the world to see in MTV’s “Real World,” “Survivor,” “Blind Date,” “Wife Swap,” “The Simple Life,” and “Laguna Beach.”
When we tire of auditioning for such shows, we simply publicize our own lives. Students post candid party pictures on Facebook, videos on YouTube, and diaries on Blogspot, for all to see. We document our everyday lives in unprecedented ways.
But in addition to our own efforts, companies like Google and Yahoo monitor our online behavior, share our personal e-mails with third parties, and save our video and voice chats.
Such detailed records of our young lives would make even Richard Nixon envious. Unlike Nixon, however, we cannot always erase the parts we don’t like. Much of what is posted on the Web is beyond our control.
Future politicians will be haunted not by whether they inhaled in college, but by whether their former friends posted pictures of their prodigal behavior. Peers with cellphone cameras have replaced the paparazzi. Partygoers playfully shout “blackmail photo” seconds after snapping photos of students making out or drinking from a keg.
Last year, my roommates and I created an online comedy group called the “Harvard Hooligans” to parody this collegiate lifestyle. Our fake Web personalities and YouTube videos gained national attention when CNN, Sports Illustrated, and The Boston Globe featured our clips on their own sites.
We challenged school administrators, condemned “dorm food,” and gave bad advice to freshmen. Many took our ridiculous rants about college to be in earnest. Students in Korea even e-mailed us for application advice. They had failed to distinguish between our personal and online personas.
While my peers laughed at our comedy clips, my parents shook their heads disapprovingly. I quickly learned how easily online information could be misinterpreted when they threatened to cut my college tuition assistance.
Although we Hooligans are a joke, others have faced serious consequences for their online behavior. More than 100 high school students were suspended or reprimanded for posting underage drinking photos or cyber-bullying in 2008.
Unless we recognize the real-world implications of our cyber-world activities, these numbers will almost certainly increase as more students join social networking sites.
Online photos and comments complicate not only our classrooms, but also our relationships. The Boston Globe recently published a feature article headlined, “Facebook broke my heart,” which details how users seek extramarital relationships via the site. Salacious comments and photos found online have caused people to question their significant others.
By blurring the boundary between public and private lives, social networking sites have become intertwined with our most personal interactions.
But the ease and efficiency with which these sites allow people to communicate and share photos ensures that they will continue to play a significant role in our culture. Their mark on politics, education, and personal interaction has only just begun.
Even my mom is taking baby steps toward becoming part of our cyberculture. When my family held a Christmas party this year, she started snapping away with her new digital camera. But instead of laboriously pasting these pictures into a scrapbook, she simply uploaded them on a photo-sharing website for friends and family (and anyone else) to enjoy.
I’m just glad I didn’t spike the eggnog.
