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)"
Good thing I have a common first and last name, there's at three people in my urban area with the same name and one famous author, too.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
A lot of folks I know use Google to check out resumes and otherwise see what sort of projects a job candidate has been up to. People used to use DejaNews (back before it was "Google Groups") to do the same thing.
I'll not comment on whether I consider this ethical or not, but it makes a certain practical sense. But it makes a bit less sense for a date, however, given that the person's online persona may be under a different name, or may be partly or wholly an invention. Still, if I'm dating a (presumed) professional who is likely to have formal or informal writings that may be on the web, it would make sense to "check." I'd personally feel icky doing so, but others wouldn't have qualms...
Caveat Lector! Oh and I've done it before, one was an actress and I found a really good review of some of her work in the LA Weekly online, so yes Googling potential dates can be a very good idea
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
I admit I have done this many times after interviewing people as a last check before hiring them. It is especially helpful when the perspective person is an active member of mailing lists that are archived on the web or on usenet for determining the technical skill of someone while they are doing something freelance such as linux kernel.
I imagine that this sort of thing will evolve into something a bit more formal, a Personal Information Agency (PIA) located offshore that maintains a database of everyone.
Companies could let them setup cameras in stores in return for having them do targeted marketing. Image recognition could be setup to determine who your friends are (who you are seen with on more than one occasion) and more!
Or not.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
In the dim recesses of Internet memory, AltaVista was king. I was working for Amazon.com, and a mutual friend suggested that the woman who is now my wife give me a ring to talk about working for a dotcom.
We met, hit it off, started dating, and five years later (this last Labor Day), got married.
Some dates after we met, she told me that she looked me up on AltaVista after she'd met me, and found 40,000 matches. (I was moderating the Internet Marketing Discussion List, www.i-m.com, and my name appeared on every post in the archives, which themselves appeared to be at many different domains.)
She said, if I'd looked you up beforehand I never would have called you. She would have been intimidated.
Thank goodness for a little lack of knowledge.
Freelance tech journalist for the Economist, MIT Technology Review, Macworld, and others
Small towns are truly a place where everyone *wants* to know your business, and it is assumed that you will be forthcoming with details of any knowledge you have of activities of interest. I live in a small town (moved from a city) and refrain from such gossip.
Interestingly,(and somewhat obviously)the less that people know about you, the more interesting you seem. If someone really wants to know something about me, all they need to do is ask.
It seems that technology, designed to facilitate communication, is only training people to communicate in a more impersonal way. Little glowing screens and and text messages, video phones, and what-have-you will not replace the immersion of face to face contact for an intimate relationship.
Besides, all that Google stuff about me having sex with midgets and pumpkins was taken totally out of context.
Okay, mine's an opposite situation but with the same guilt:
This summer I went on a blind date with a girl. We had some common interests but we just weren't hitting it off. Later that week I did a google search on her and found out that she was a pretty well respected artist. I read up on the artists she worked with, the school she studied at, the galleries she'd been in, and found that we had some common ground in art and new tech. The next time we went out, we had a fantastic three hour conversation about art and technology. I never told her about my google search.
Is that cheating?
both on and *off* the web that I'm not about to start worrying about it now. More to the point, I 've said a good deal that a prospective date or employer will take offense at that *I don't regret at all.*
As my sweet, little old granny used to say, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."
If things I've written are going to deny me a particular date/job as far as I'm concerned better finding out now than later. It saves us all a lot of unneeded pain and suffering in the long run.
I'm dead serious and I'm not about to go about my life worrying about what some future unnamed and unknowable personage is going to think about me because of something I believed or said once upon a time.
Like me or dislike me. I don't really care in particular. *Someone* likes me. I'll go hang out with them.
Hell, there are even people who like RMS. Go figure.
KFG
That what they say online is often archived and then a part of the public record. I've said this many times online that what you will say cana nd will come back to haunt you.
It doesn't necessarily mean that Big Brother is watching. What it means is that if you develop a reputation online - a flame thrower, lunatic, nutcase, All-Information-Wants-To-Be-Free-Die-Private-Softw are-makers-Die - it might just come out in the least oppurtune times. During a job interview or say if the general public becomes net savvy at last...
Remember that Usenet convo that you are embarassed to think about? Yeah, we do too. Soon your future SOs and employers will be looking too.
THINK before you open your mouth. It was good advice before the net came about and its even better now.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
I routinely google people. Not just dates or potential dates; but nearly everyone I come across. People (especially in .ox.ac.uk) tend to have a variety of interests and expertise, and by googling someone I can find out about those much more quickly than by spending hours talking to them.
And it goes both ways: If I've met someone new and they want me to briefly describe myself, I'm quite likely to tell them to google me instead. I've done lots of stuff over the years, and I'm likely to forget to mention whatever any particular person is most interested in.
It has nothing to do with potential amorous interests; googling people just makes sense. (Assuming, of course, that you can identify which person you're looking for out of those sharing the same name; but in my experience that isn't too hard.)
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
You can use google to improve a relationship you're in. For instance, you can find other people of the same name and say ...
* This Jane Doe in Athens, GA is a black belt. Maybe you should work out now.
* This Jane Doe in Palo Alto has a PhD in Chemistry, maybe she doesn't burn all her food.
But anyway, I'm back to using it to check out hopeful dates.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
Don't just consider web pages, but if you post news non-anonymously (or to /. non-anonymouly) it isn't just the carefully considered rant that is archived forever more, but every ill-considered flamage as well. Having posted to news from well before "dejanews", I was a bit surprised, and not entirely pleased that my posting history back to 1996 is available.
On the otherhand, I do choose to post non-anoymously. While that has some problems, it does mean that not only do I consider what I might regret later, anybody reading my posts can expect that I consider what I might regret later. That might add a smidgen of credibility (which of course can be squandered easily).
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Coincidence Design
Check out the rates. $8k just gets research. If you want the whole deal, its about $80k.
Given the vast amount of information on the internet, it is not unlikely that while googling for a certain person, you will find someone else entirely. If you really know nothing at all about the person you're looking for (for example, if you're looking up a blind date or a job applicant), there is no way for you to know if you're reading about your person or someone else.
For example, I just did a google search for my own name, and could not find my website or, for that matter, anything else affiliated with me in the top 50 links. However, I did find a lawyer, a statistician, a food expert, a college professor, a witness testimony, a sex offender, and an author with the same name as myself. If my date is googling for me, is she supposed to think I'm the professor or the sex offender?
The chances of getting incorrect information makes googling seem far too risky in my opinion. Has anyone else had better luck finding accurate information?
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
Am I the only one who interpreted "Googling for a date" to mean "Use google to find a date"?
Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea: a Google-based dating service. A match-making algorith can't be that different to a search algorithm, could it?
---
Open Source Shirts
http://www.sltrib.com/2002/Dec/12142002/saturday/1 1099.asp
here's the same story... found via google news
Having an unusual name actually works too. I mean, if you search on my real name the first thing that pops up is my homepage. And guess who controls what is published there?
It's not had to find the more nasty stuff, but it usually involves not just Googling... After all you usually use a Nom De Plume while flaming on the internet.
- The Ottoman Turks, led by Memed II, capture Constantinople: the end of the Byzantine Empire, 29 May
- Talbot defeated and slain at Castillon, Gascony, in final battle of The Hundred Years War, 17 July
- King Henry VI suffers mental collapse at royal manor of Clarendon, 1 August
- Queen Margaret gives birth to Edward, crown prince, 13 October
- Bordeaux, last English possession in Guyenne, surrenders to the French , 19 October
- Somerset arrested and confined to The Tower, 23 November
Without Google, I'd only have known about the fall of Constantinople and the end of the Hundred Years' War! Thanks Google!Anyone care to chime in on this? Sometimes, when I'm feeling meloncholy for my youth, I type in an old girlfriend's name just to see where they might be.
Is this OK, or am I some sort of stalker freak?
Although it could be that I'm just unfamiliar with the whole "dating" thing altogether, I hear it involves someone of the opposite sex or something? :)
(And if you don't wanna follow the links, NPR = National Public Radio, a fairly liberal radio network that is mostly funded by donations from listeners. Wait Wait -- Don't Tell Me! is a "news quiz show" that usually focuses on the weirder and more obscure news items - it's rather humorous, generally.)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.