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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.
I am sure everytime I apply for a job, employers scan through Google searching for my name. After all, it was what this article was about.
But then again, whether for dating purposes, or otherwise, why would I put up a page saying something that I may regret later? I am aware that search engines will pick up these pages. I suppose I would be a bit worried if something was out there against me that I had no full control over.
Is Googling OK?
In case I ever date a women who has done porn, I'll probably know.
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.
there's a child molester in a neighboring state with the same name as me.
... just not against the 'victims' of it. the internet can be a useful tool, and a horrible device.
there was a warrent out for his arrest, long story short, the cop didn't believe that i wasn't him. fun night.
anyway, if someone was to look me up on google, they would find a sexual predator? great. gotta love free information.
i'm all for megan's law
Runnin' On Empty
Why not trust the other person to tell you about themselves and their past? Seems to me this is a way to look for any faults you can find in someone. Sounds like a sure fire way to end a relationship to me.
You: "Honey, I was just on google. Says on there that you once did (insert stupid mistake or whatever).
SO:"Oh really? So, how long have you been checking up on me?"
You: "Oh, I just wanted to see..."
SO: "Well, how about you see the door as it hits your butt on the way out?"
Sent from your iPad.
Sign of the impending apocalypse:
Slashdot editor looks up word in dictionary.
Film at 11.
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
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!
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.
That's very interesting. The other day a less computer saavy buddy of mine came over looking for some techincal assistence, gleaming over the new PC he'd just purchased and hooked up to the internet. Since he's not very "connected", I decided to play around with his head a little, telling him that you could find out anything about a person through this magical search engine called "Google". To prove this to him I ran his name (not a common one) through it, not really expecting anything. Low and behold it came up in the form of a .txt file from a job he hadn't held in about a year. Along with his own name came his father's name and email address (who is a Labor Relations manager, a field that can get heated), his mother's name and where she went to high school, and countless other miscellaneous tidbits of information about him and his family.
What surprised me most, however, was the information that didn't surface. While all of this trivial information found it's way to my monitor, the information I would have expected to appear didn't. A few years ago, during a low point in his life, he'd manage to amass quite a criminal record: a few semi-violent crimes (bar fights constitute assult) and an attempted felony, he had even been associated with a large hate group. None of that surfaced in my googling.
I guess the moral of the story is googling your date isn't exactly the most acurate way of checking his or her background if you're into that type of thing. I'm glad this information didn't surface in his case, as he's put his past behind him and started a new life. I don't think "ex-neo nazi skinhead" sends potential dates the right message on a first date. He's told his current girlfriend, but only when the relationship was a point where he felt okay in doing so, and she accepted it.
Anyway, that's my two cents.
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
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.
"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.
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?
Care to share? *cough* I want to make sure it's not the same girl.
Er.
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
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
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.
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
the impossibilty of seperating the 'victims' of Megan's law from its intended 'perps.'
I rather suspect that you weren't exactly treated in a real 'innocent until proven guilty' manner either. As you say, "fun night."
*All* laws that seek to 'preempt' crime create a class of innocent vitims. Some of them have their lives ruined beyond repair. Be greatful it was only your night that was 'fun.'
I'd go so far as to state that preemptive laws create many, many more innocent 'victims' of law than they save actual vitims of crime.
Have you read the so called "Patriot" Act? Hell, from now on it doesn't even necessarily *matter* if you're innocent or guilty.
KFG
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?
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