Saving Face

Do you know what I'm doing now? Cleaning up my Internet identity. Doing searches on myself and changing the URL to my blogspot account. Professionals my age, if they're anything like me, have this unique problem of having realized their individual publishing power at an early age and proliferated a ton of really maudlin, embarrassing content all over the freakin' place.

Take this for example. As soon as you Google my name, this is the first thing appears:



"Oh my god, Janelle, you're in Google hell!"
-- Close friend of mine upon seeing

"Yeah, and nice sunglasses at night."
-- Unsolicited additional commentary

Oh my god, I ever thought Karen O was a style icon?? I would never hire me.

As I was tracking down the blogs of these sneaky, elusive publicists at work today, I was reminded of what I already know. As I am able to dig up details on the Internet for them (and being paid to do so!), they can do the same of me. Everything I have done is somewhere out there for the smart enough search engine. Ew! Ew! Even those heartfelt LiveJournal posts I wrote for all my friends in high school!

I have half a mind to write a letter to Washington City Paper's Darrow Montgomery and plead, "Please guy, I was just a kid. Take it down. Stop punishing me." But I think that's contrary to journalism and publishing all together. This was once the ugly, ugly truth, and it's out their for the world to see.

(btw, it's really hard to do screenshots on a mac. nerds!)