Slashdot Mirror
Googling For Dates?
JAK writes "The New York Times' down-to-earth ethicist Randy Cohen writes on the moral implications of searching for a date's past on Google. He suggests that the practice is ok (even admitting to doing it himself) but warns against jumping to conclusions based on a quick search or confusing someone for others with the same name. He also writes that "the verb ''to Google'' is now a familiar neologism" (neologism: a new word, usage, or expression, I looked it up).
You can read about it The Times (free reg blah blah)"
This could threaten the whole concept of this "internet" fad forever! =)
so me and this girl are totally googling and she's all like if you google me first i'll totally google you. so i get all set to google and she backs out grabs her google and googles the fuck out of there. something about my website. i don't know. google her and the horse she googled in on.
In case I ever date a women who has done porn, I'll probably know.
and found out she had lived in all 50 states of the USA, with about 60 different addresses in each one. Barbara, I would have loved you but you googled out to be really bloody sketchy.
remember, no matter where you go, there you are
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but if you're going to use the net to search for info on anyone, I'd suggest using other things than just Google. For example, I used free memberships to a couple of online dating sites to not only find out more about my date, but I had naked pic's of her before we even decided on where to go to dinner! Now that's using the net to find useful information!
Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.
If you haven't read every single google link about your Significant Other, you're just not in love.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
Just wait for day when a web spider gets smart enough to correlate blog user IDs to real names. I sure hope I never get my real name correlated against Anonymous Coward - I'd never get a smart date again!
Maybe so, but in P.R. China you probably can't google any one you know who is Taiwanese.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
i know...at the point where you break into their wireless lan to google about them from there.
Sign of the impending apocalypse:
Slashdot editor looks up word in dictionary.
Film at 11.
If this practice takes off you can guarantee we'll be setting up a few impartial "third party" websites that bespeaks a plethora of praise in our own honor.
Each site'll have a whole bunch of meta tags, something like:
BENEVOLENT, NATHDOT, KIND, LIKES LONG WALKS ALONG BEACHES, NATHDOT, NATHDOT, NEVER KICKS CATS, NATHDOT, NATHDOT, NATHDOT, CHARITABLE TOWARD ALL MANKIND, NATHDOT, 9 1/2" PENIS, NATHDOT, GREAT COOK, etc. etc.
Simply by flooding the source of information she'll be hard pressed if she can ever find that juvie record for arson and wilfull destruction of property.
Think Different.
I wouldn't be so sure. So far, no one, and I mean NO ONE can seem to spell "goat sex" right. What is that, like 7 letters?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Am I the only person that uses Google and a wireless web device to fake knowledge during conversations? I pick out keywords as people talk and read about it while half listening and then reply as if I actually knew about the subject. Of course I kind of do know about the subject then but it never fails to impress people that you know about everything they are interested in. If you're good they won't even notice you looking stuff up.
:)
I can only imagine more of this as we get more into wearable computers or even wetware.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The other Too Much Coffee Man is a CHILD MOLESTER??!?
Say it aint so!
"I swear, it was a different Zeph Campbell!"
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
"but warns against jumping to conclusions based on a quick search or confusing someone for others with the same name"
Even more specific to imagies.google.com if your dates name end in 'ie'. =)
Care to share? *cough* I want to make sure it's not the same girl.
Er.
I tried selling her half used bottle of skin cream on eBay the other week. If she did a google for it, then I might be in a world of hurt.
At least it wasn't yeast infection cream, huh?*
*No infection had ever occurred to my knowledge.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I looked at the title "Googling For Dates?" and I thought Google started a dating service (dates.goolge.com) but after i read the thing, you have to have a date already :(
Free Instant Site Inclusion
C'mon, she said she was a hacker....
He... ...warns against jumping to conclusions based on a quick search or confusing someone for others with the same name.
So basically do exactly the opposite of what they'd do on Three's Company. Got it.
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ok. Maybe not always
Google is a mighty tool, capable of being used for great good, or great evil! You must learn to respect that power!
Right.
Well, what if she was into mutilating chickens?
If you were an ass, you might just walk up to her in public and say "OH MY GOD YOU MUTILATE CHICKENS!"
If you weren't an ass, you might find some other reason to get the hell away from her.
And if you never did the search at all, you might end up in a dark forest in the middle of a chicken mutilating ceremony and then everything would be awkward!
(Sorry, I'm so in the mood for chicken cordon bleu right now.)
er... wait...
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
It's like discovering your girlfriend posed for playboy: the moment she finds out you know, your relationship will fall apart.
Shhyeah, I know that feeling
True story: I was thinking of asking this one girl out. Honor student, totally anal, the whole works. So I googled her, as any good hacker would. What came up?
The local police blotter!
Thank you, Google! I still know where my wallet is because of you!
My due diligence before a round of interviews included a Google search on the hiring manager's name. I was looking for conversation ideas, but when I told him how I learned that he played the drums, I think I stepped over a line. Or maybe I didn't get the job for some more substantial reason?
So if you're really desperately hot for a particular chick and can fake casual sincerity you've got it made.
Oh, you misunderstood, I meant any exceptionally hot chicks, not one i specific. And I am always sincere, whether I mean it or not.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
This is interesting and all, but I fail to see why the slashdot crowd needs to know this.
I mean, it's not like we're going to spend our time googleing our girlfriends. We already know everything about them. After all, we made them up.
Google search: Britney Spears Chance in Hell
Results: None.
WTF?
I can envision a time where we can openly
document our dating histories (possibly
without full names of past SO's, unless
authorised by each one, in turn), and -
like Philip Greenspun seems to do -
invite (by their publication) - anyone
to have a read, eg before coming any closer.
In Sweden, the Tax Office still (AFAIK)
allows one open access to anyone else's
most current year's tax record, including
net income for state & local tax purposes.
That's one of the parameters that some
check before deciding how close to come,
or so goes one urban myth...
Telling more personal details, eg publish-
ing our diaries, histories of loves past,
present & [perferences about] future, as
if written (in part) for use as profiles
for online dating services...
Of course buyer beware still applies!
- If your date has a Web site of her own, well, first off, you're dating the kind of girl who'll love a /.er tenderly, and secondly, there's no need for awkward phone-number and e-mail cullings when you have WHOIS.
I admit I have done this many times after interviewing people as a last check before hiring them.
I have too. Funniest one was a guy who had posted in some kind of student self-help forum, basically his advice was "have a wank; I do it all the time".
I must pop onto google groups and ask them to remove all my semi-humorous usenet posts from their archive, and only leave the saintly helping-out-users posts. It can only help.
I'm lucky to have a pretty common name (sorta equivalent to "John Smith" where I come from), but this goes both ways - posts might be attributed to me when they're not mine, or they might be attributed to others when they are.
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
Am I the only one that finds it fiercely ironic that Google is providing regstrationless entry into a registration-only New York Times article talking about the ethics of using Google? :)
About 30 Minutes after the police issued an arrest warrant for John Allen Williams in connection with the DC area sniper murders, I looked him up on Google. In only a matter of minutes this page had already been set up.
1) Enter preference (e.g. "hair:Blonde sex:Female age:25 breasts:big")
2) Click "I'm Feeling Lucky"
Yeah, Randy Cohen is probably right. This is not a good idea.
I read the blurb on the main page and couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what the hell the topic was. Why would searching for dates be an ethical problem? I try to find things in past on Google all the time....
Oh. Dates. As in girls. Not Julian calendar dates.
Slap forehead.
Yes siree. Google has now branched out again. In addition to Froogle.google, they now have Oogle.google for all your dating needs.
This is really old news; The Wall Street Journal ran a similar article in 1996, only then 1) it was AltaVista, and 2) it was actually news.
...-.-
We pause here to note that Google's ranking algorithm is popularity based. You're looking for the girl that has been "linked" the most. Jesus, dude, why not just read the bathroom walls?
</aghast>
Speaking of things you didn't ever expect to see on Google, I Googled for an ex-girlfriend one time, and I ran across her friggin obituary.
What a haunting experience that was.
I understand "to Google", but what is this "date" thing of which you speak?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Since when has anyone actually heard anyone else use it in this manner, or used it themselves?
I use it as a replacement for "searching", and I hear countless other do the same..."go google for foo". Yes, I guess it could be applied to a person, but I seriously doubt it's used soley as that - unless you are some executive type who doesn't even know where "all your base are belong to us" comes from...so many of these assholes still think yahoo and microsoft are the only way to search. Yes, the same assholes who repeat, "talk to the hand", "don't go there, girlfriend", "show me the money!" and other stupid memes.
Is the dipstick who wrote this immersed in internet culture at all, or is he just another "pundit" who only uses AOL and for IM and email, at that? I wonder if he's heard of mailing lists and Usenet, or is it all about "chat rooms" for him?
I bet his next editorial will be: "The latest neologism: 'blogging' - is it okay to read others' online diaries????"
What a tool this guy is. More apropos to privacy issues would be companies' being able to do a financial background check on employees - why can't *I*, as an employee, do the same for the people running the company I work for? After all, we are entering into a sort of contract that would ordinarily require due diligence, but this is not an option for employees. Or honesty and full disclosure in accounting at companies - why can't *I* know the company is bleeding money, and there will likely be layoffs? These are much more pressing issues in the realm of ethics, not some fucking puff piece on dating.