Social Media and You – Out of the Mouths of Lawyers (Part 1):

(Upfront, I apologize for the length of the post and that it turned into a bit of how-to. This certainly won’t be the trend, but as you’ll read, this is something that’s come up enough recently that I thought I’d spend some time on it. Plus, I just got carried away =P)

For my first non-introductory entry, I thought I’d tackle some of the issues surrounding social media, specifically Facebook but also equally applicable to a site like Twitter – partially because I love both of them and also because I don’t want you to run away screaming when I start waxing philosophical… yet. You might be thinking to yourself, “Geez, I’m on someone’s blog, of COURSE I know about social networking sites!” However, this conversation has come up several times for me recently, including yesterday with a nice lawyer I was sitting with on the plane from Boston to Atlanta (ironically while I was writing yesterday’s inaugural blog post) who mentioned that the first thing she does when handling a lawsuit is to look up the defendant on Facebook. She went on to say that more than once what she’s found on someone’s Facebook page has prompted her to call the opposing counsel to see if they already wanted to settle. Have your attention yet? Good. Now, there are some really simple things you may be overlooking that could be very important when it comes to your social media.

The main issue with these kinds of websites is privacy. The first thing to note is that with social networking you basically have none. That’s right, I went there. NONE. Stop to consider that for a second because it’s kind of a big deal. Well, at least it’s as big of a deal as you make it insofar as how much you want the world to know. Facebook is probably the biggest example and convergence of internet privacy issues to date. In a world where we are constantly linked-in to the internet with laptops, netbooks, iPads (which are so freakin’ shiny!), smartphones, and the like, a site like Facebook is literally at the world’s fingertips at the drop of a hat. This in and of itself is not a problem, but it can become a huge one if you’re not aware of what it is that you’re doing.

I guarantee you that 90% of the people you know have never even looked at their privacy settings in Facebook. The privacy settings allow you to limit what other people can see at varying degrees of freedom away from you (i.e. your friends versus friends of friends that you awkwardly know because of that one time at that one party with that incident on the table that you don’t like to talk about versus other people in your network that you’re not friends with at all because they’re total creepers) and can be found under the “Account” drop-down menu.


From there the most important options, at least in my opinion, are found under Personal Information and Posts.


When you get inside that menu, you can see that you can hide almost anything on your profile page. What might be slightly more surprising is how much you haven’t hidden already (unless you happen to already be technologically conscious and if so, congratulations. Have a cookie!).


Keep in mind that most people on almost any Facebook network can see anything that’s not specifically hidden. Even if you have your different posts and photos limited to within your network, this is no longer even a guarantee. Waaaaaaay back when, as in when I started college in 2005, Facebook used to only be for those who had access to valid university email addresses. Moreover, a specific email address would only gain you access to that particular university’s network. These days, however, anyone can join pretty much any network if you a valid email address. And I mean ANYone. What this means is that if you want to keep your Facebook profile relatively private, you HAVE to limit access to your content to pretty much just your friends.

This is not to say that people who aren’t friends with you yet won’t be able to see anything about you when they search. It just means they’ll be able to see significantly less than one of your friends. If you want to check and see what different people can see, the “Preview My Profile” button up in the corner.


From there you’ll be able to see the default page that people within Facebook see when they search for you, say if they were going to add you as a friend. Take a look around and see what it is that you’ve left open. Make sure to pay special attention to your different photos and albums. While the other privacy settings are fairly straightforward, your pictures could turn out to be a disaster. In order to hide all of your pictures, you have to go through and set the privacy settings for each individual album. That means if you have 20 albums, you’re going to have to go through 20 times and set the privacy for each one to only be for the viewing pleasure and ridicule of your friends.

Another thing that you might want to do is to take a look at what specific friends see on your page. You can do this by typing a friend’s name into the box at the top of the preview page.


This is especially useful if you want to marginally but not completely limit access to certain people. I’ve found this to be an ideal fix for parents and family members who have ninja-ed their way into Facebook. I say ninja-ed, of course, because when I first started using Facebook it was limited to only college students, and it was a big part of the college experience that’s supposed to be getting you away from your family. At any rate, you may feel bad for rejecting the friend request from your mom or even your grandmother (oh yes, there’s a good chance that at least one of your friends’ grandparents is on Facebook and yes, it boggles the mind) but there may be certain things that you don’t want them to see. Using the preview button, you can take a look at what it is that they can see on your page. If there’s something that they have access to that you DON’T want them to see, you can go back to the privacy settings and make an exception for a particular content area. For instance, you might let all of your friends see the posts on your wall, except for your mom (would you believe that this was the first thing that I did when my mom added me on Facebook? Of course you would!). You can make that exception through the drop down menu. You can also create full lists of friends to make an exception for. This is also useful for those of us in grad school who have students that we TA for who are just trying to be friendly and we don’t want to reject but want to maintain professional distance as well.

Alright. So there you have a good background guide to Facebook privacy. Again, sorry it turned out to be a bit how-to-ish. In part 2, we'll look at the more practical side of why it is that you should care about your privacy at all instead of letting it all hang out for the world to see.

A Brief History of the World (of Me)

Before blogging took off to become the way in which everyday people shared their supposedly “prolific” (though usually mundane) thoughts on the world or Perez Hilton appeared to entice us with all of the celebrity gossip that we never really needed to know or aspiring political pundits took to the web to espouse the most radical viewpoints imaginable that never have been and likely never will be suitable for any other forum, people simply wrote to pass the time and engage in an activity as cathartic as the most relaxing vacation or life-examining conversation with life-long friends. In the past, writing has provided that outlet for me, and now I hope it will again. Will anyone listen? I doubt it. Does that matter? Absolutely not. In my teens, creative writing along with some journaling helped me come to grips with who I was and where I saw myself in the world. Yet, as of late, I’ve found it somewhat difficult to find a handhold on the passage of time - to slow down and enjoy the simpler things in the tiniest moments that are nested in the day-to-day hustle and bustle of big-city life which is only exacerbated by the pains joys of graduate school. I hope that by forcing myself to sit down and examine different things with the intent of writing about them, I can regain some footing in the overly-busy world I’ve created for myself.

Don’t get me wrong, I asked for and usually enjoy the life that I’ve chosen to live at the ripe old age of 22. Could I have chosen something to go into something more lucrative (like business or medicine) or something easier (like a basic office or computer job)? Of course. However, I’ve never really aspired to underachieve when it comes to my academic and career goals. Other than that brief, ungodly stint where I thought I not only wanted to be but would enjoy being a doctor, I’ve never even really considered careers with high-paying salaries. Now of course, this paints me into a corner where I’m theoretically working way too hard for not enough money. Welcome to the reality of grad school. And yet, for some reason, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Grad school is all of the following: difficult, stressful, full of failure, abound with overly inflated scientific egos, five years of your life sucked into a black hole, a roadblock to personal relationships and a social life, and a guaranteed financial stress. Of course, you may be sitting there thinking, “Who on earth would possibly subject themselves to that?!” The answer is quite simple really – masochistic nerds. Yet, the thrill of discovering something new even if it’s only exciting to you and no one else (as is usually the case in academia) is enough to make the entire process worthwhile. Keeping this in mind along the way is often difficult, but that occasional glimmer of light at the end of the scientific tunnel is enough to keep us going.

Grad school aside, I certainly never had to move to a city like Boston. Well over 1,000 miles from my friends and family, a move from the South to New England’s and one of the U.S.’s largest cities didn’t have to be part of “the plan” (read: occasionally drawn out life goals that constantly change, often to the dismay of the parental units). Why did I do it, then, you might ask? I’ve always felt more at home in a cosmo/metropolitan area. People tend to be less judgmental and much more “live and let live.” Of course, even in the largest city in the South, you have people who still want to know all about your business. In many ways, Louisville was the largest small town you could imagine because it retained that rather undesirable southern trait. Over a million people? No problem! You can still go out of our way to find out anything about anyone if you’re really interested and/or motivated enough.


New England, at large, seems to find a way around this problem. It probably has something to do with being more liberal in general – and thus, in many ways less judgmental – than many areas of the South. Yet, it also comes at a bit of a cost. Although it’s not clear which causes which, the “live and let live” attitude of New England comes along with a social aloofness or isolation that you’d never find in the South. In the South, you can walk outside, wave at someone, and end up with a new friend before the day is out. In New England, if you do the little awkward wave that says, “I’m just walking by but I’d thought I’d be nice and let you know that I simply acknowledge your existence” to someone you’re likely to be given a really weird look and/or eyeroll. This is not to say that people in New England aren’t friendly, which is the common misconception held by those hailing from the U.S.’s more southern latitudes. I’ve never had an interaction with anyone in Boston where they were simply flat-out rude. There just seems to be a difference in opinion as to how energy should be expended with respect to other people between those in the South and those in New England. Now, what does all of that rambling mean? The point is that it’s somewhat more difficult to establish a friend-base in a larger city, especially one like Boston. This, of course, perpetuates some of the worst qualities of grad school like social isolation or overworking. When it’s that much harder to make friends, why not spend all of your free time trying to find that scientific breakthrough that’s always just out of reach just around the corner!

So, after all of that, you can see that the portrait has been painted of an overworked, underpaid, slightly masochistic graduate student who’s made it even more difficult to maintain the relationships that he has by moving 1,200 miles away from most of the people that he considers the most important and is in a difficult position to create new relationships thanks to both his choice of career and location. Fantastic. Now you can see hopefully see a bit of where my perspective comes from and why taking the time to do something as simple as writing a blog would be therapeutic and perhaps necessary to remain sane.

From here on out, I’ll be providing my thoughts on lots of things: life, politics, pop culture, technology, music, all things gay, or anything else. It’s all fair game if I happen to find it interesting. Does that mean that YOU will find it interesting? I won’t even come close to trying to guarantee that. Luckily, that’s why a search bar exists near the top of your browser to get you as far away from here as quickly as possible if you wish. That being said, when I do make new blog posts, I’ll try and inject my own brand of humor so that hopefully if you suffer through this with me, you might at least get a tiny chuckle here and there (don’t hold your breath for total LOLs).

For now, all I can say is stay tuned and watch what happens.