[ghaff]

It gets rather bothersome. My professional life at least is pretty public and it's sort of my job. But I'm pretty happy that there weren't ubiquitous cameras and videos around when I was younger.

In practice, most of us are somewhat protected by sheer numbers and the fact that people move on and a lot of information does effectively rot over time.

Balanced against that though is the increasingly number of cameras and automated recognition and categorization systems. And the whole mob mentality. Obviously in the cases where it has actually led to deaths. But also in the, perhaps rare, but well-documented cases where a stupid off-hand remark or action triggers the social media machine and the path of least resistance is career-ending firings and the like.

[sorenjan]

I somewhat agree to your point that the sheer volume of new stuff makes most things disappear rather fast from the public eye. But what used to be a moment among friends, let's say spontaneous skinny dipping or a badly chosen joke, gets shared with everyone in your extended circles and is easily saved and brought up whenever in the future.

Then there's the mob mentality issue you mention, and perhaps more relevant to this article. Even after it passes the names and images are still around when people search your name. It's on your permanent record.

[ghaff]

>It's on your permanent record.

Absolutely, I have an effectively unique name as far as the Internet is concerned. So, if I were to become "Internet famous" for something problematic, it's pretty much a given that would be near the top of search terms any time someone searched on me whether a recruiter or anyone else.

Worse though is probably if you share a name with someone Internet notorious and plausibly could be confused with that person. A story I like to tell is pre-Web but someone I know in NYC shared a name with someone who got into a very public and polarizing local spat and something. My friend literally got death threats left on his voicemail.