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To Google Friends Or Not To Google, That Is the Question

Posted by samzenpus on from the how-about-just-asking dept.

Hugh Pickens writes writes "Henry Alford writes that in an ideal world, we would all use Google to be better friends by having better recall and to research our new friends and acquaintances to get to know them better. 'It's perfectly natural and almost always appropriate,' says social anthropologist Kate Fox. 'Obviously, one is always going to have to be discreet when talking about what you've found. But our brains haven't changed since the Stone Age, and humans are designed to live in small groups in which everyone knows one another. Googling is an attempt to recreate a primeval, preindustrial pattern of interaction.' But the devil is in the details. If we tell a new friend that we've read her LinkedIn entry or her wedding announcement, it probably won't be perceived as trespassing, as long we bear no ulterior motives. If we happen to reveal that we've also read her long-ago abandoned blog about her cat, we're more likely to be seen as chronically bored than menacing. 'I'm so baffled by this idea that we're not supposed to Google people,' says Dean Olsher. 'Why would there be a line? Like everyone else is allowed to know something but I'm not?' But doesn't taking the google shortcut to a primeval, preindustrial pattern of recognition sometimes rob encounters of their inherent mystery or even get us in trouble? Tina Jordan, an executive in book publishing who has the same name as a former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, says, 'I typically tell any blind dates before I meet them that they probably shouldn't Google my name, otherwise they'll be sorely disappointed when they meet me.'"

14 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. So let me get this straight... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're seriously asking if one should dig up shit about one's friends or not, as if that was a valid question?

    Are you insane?

    No really: Are. You. Insane?

    Friends are people that you *trust. Do yo know what trust is?
    Trust is when you don't know, and rely on somebody anyway.

    If you can't rely on your friends... then sorry... but they are not friends.

    And to be frank: The one thing missing from today's society... is that we aren't friends anymore.
    Because some clinically insane psychopaths... care only about money... above all else...
    and we are stupid enough to hold that up high, as if it were an ideal.

    1. Re:So let me get this straight... by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're seriously asking if one should dig up shit about one's friends or not, as if that was a valid question?
      Are you insane?

      Perhaps they meant "friends" (of the Facebook variety) rather than friends (real ones that you meet in real life).

      If anyone I care about had any online-only "friends", I'd probably consider it wise if they Googled such "friends" and still kept them in the dark about private items. On the other hand, I'd consider it curious if anyone were to Google their real friends.

      As TFS and TFA said, we're wired to have a relatively small group of friends whom we know quite well (and who know us in return) through regular exchanges in real life. All others are merely acquaintances (like members of a neighboring tribe whom we hear about but rarely encounter), even if deceptively labeled as "friends" by network or workplace. The friend word is really being abused nowadays.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    2. Re:So let me get this straight... by OldSport · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Basically this is why I cancelled my Facebook account. I keep in regular touch with my actual friends regardless, and all the noise from those relatively meaningless acquaintances is cut out. This is what was once known as "normal life." (For the acquaintances with whom I do want to maintain a contact channel for whatever reason, I have a LinkedIn account, which I basically only look at once a month, if that.)

      As for Googling people, all I can say is some people have too much time on their hands. I'm either working, playing, or spending time with my family. I don't have the time to play cyber detective, and even if I did, I couldn't really give two shits about digging up dirt on people.

    3. Re:So let me get this straight... by Deep+Esophagus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The alternative, in the case of friends whose preferred form of communication is Facebook, is to use Facebook exclusively for actual friends. I don't add people I met online (and rarely even know their real names). I don't add friends-of-friends. I don't even add relatives of friends unless I know the relative personally. I don't add people I have encountered briefly in the recent past. I don't add people I went to school with and now don't remember their names or anything about them. With two or three exceptions, I don't add people I have never met in person. I don't add people who work at the same company I do (some 2000+ employees worldwide) unless I actually work with them on a regular basis.

      The result? I actually know and care about and trust the people I call friends on Facebook, and have no trouble calling them friends in the classic sense. Facebook, like any other tool, can be used to improve your life or destroy it. Unfortunately most people can't tell the difference and allow it to do more harm than good.

    4. Re:So let me get this straight... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The information you find on Google is hardly trustworthy anyway. If you google my name you will find some religious nut job spouting rubbish that I would never endorse. Due to having a name that is associated with that religion though you would be forgiven for assuming it was me if you were a potential employer.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:So let me get this straight... by OldSport · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You forgot "every three months when Facebook decides to change their default privacy policy and app policy."

      That might be my problem, though. All my actual friends barely use Facebook (if they even have an account) which gave me a pretty low S/N... Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.

  2. Return to pre-20th century accountability by michaelmalak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As I wrote two years ago here, 20th century anonymity was an anomaly.

    The return to societal accountability will be a good thing, in my opinion, but the panopticon that prevents business and political trade secrets and that immortalizes peeping-tom photos will be bad things.

    1. Re:Return to pre-20th century accountability by BenEnglishAtHome · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your take on anonymity in that old post remains just plain silly.

      ...anonymity was unique to the 20th century. In the 19th century, due to transportation constraints, everyone knew who you were and what you did.

      No. Just...no.

      Even in the late 19th century and certainly for all of history preceding that time, anyone who wanted anonymity could simply walk away. I've often thought that if I had been born in 1830 or so on the east coast of the U.S., before I reached my 20s I would have started walking west. I might have died in the first week. I might have achieved great things. I'll never know.

      I do know, however, that anonymity was easily achieved in those days. Walk 10 miles, make up a new name for yourself, forget your past, and keep walking. Lather, rinse, repeat as often as your own personal demons or desires drove you to do so. Anonymity just came with the territory.

      What we are facing in the near future is historically unique - a true, inescapable loss of anonymity made possible by a panopticon that never forgets, that is even learning to recognize our faces. That, imo, is a truly scary prospect.

    2. Re:Return to pre-20th century accountability by BenEnglishAtHome · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It appears you're trying to make my point for me.

      Ever since we settled down and started farming, most people were born, lived, and died within a day's walk of the same spot. Even before that, I suspect, most people lived their lives surrounded by more or less the same people, even if the location changed.

      Exactly. Most people don't care about anonymity and thus it has always been rare. It was less rare over the last few hundred years but it's always been uncommon.

      Uncommon. Not impossible. Big difference.

      Illustrations? Here's something random - a quote from Tom Horn:

      There were many different branches making up the Apache tribe. There were the Tonto Apaches, San Carlos Apaches, White Mountain Apaches, Cibicus, Agua Caliente (or Warm Springs), and last and worst of all were the Chiricahuas. All of these Indians spoke the same language, but were divided according to their dispositions. Thus a bad Tonto would leave the Tontos and go to the Cibicus or the Chiricahuas, and a timid Chiricahua would move to the Tontos, so at the time of which I am writing, you could find a good Indian or a bad Indian by knowing to what tribe he belonged. They all wore their hair different, and for one accustomed to them they could be told apart as far as you could see them.

      That's just one example of the fact that it's always been possible, even in small societies where everybody knew everybody, to re-invent yourself and leave your old persona behind.

      Changing your surroundings, your people, and achieving anonmymity has always been possible. It's just never seemed particularly worth the trouble except for a few folks who *really* don't fit in.

      Thus the stage is set for today where not enough people understand or value anonymity enough to fight for it despite the fact that it's on the verge of ceasing to exist, a sea-change in the human condition brought about, uniquely in this age, by technology.

      I love tech because I know how powerful it is. At the same time, it's something easily perverted to nefarious purposes that will be damn near impossible to resist once they take hold. I find your throw-up-your-hands-and-surrender attitude (to paraphrase, "Anonymity is a historical blip. When it's gone, no big deal") sets my teeth particularly on edge this morning. I think you're wrong but I apologize if I've been a bit rude in the way I expressed that conclusion.

      At least I didn't quote LBJ to make my point; I'm not going to be that much of an ass.

  3. Thank god it's not called "Fondle"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Googling is an attempt to recreate a primeval, preindustrial pattern of interaction."

    Yes, I, too, long for the good ol' days of yore when we all used AltaVista...

  4. Getting it wrong... by Nemosoft+Unv. · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't know about you, but this strikes me as odd:

    "Henry Alford writes that in an ideal world, we would all use Google to be better friends [....] to get to know them better."

    Why would I use a computer to get to know a friend better? Wouldn't it make much more sense to actually *talk* to them, let them (and their friends) tell you stories about their past, including the embarrassing ones their friends and acquaintances will dig up for them (whether they like it or not :)). What's wrong with going to a bar together, go to their birthday party or join them for a weekend break? Isn't that what friends are for?

    --
    "Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
  5. If you put it out there by hack++slash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You shouldn't be surprised when people view it.

    --
    To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
    1. Re:If you put it out there by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You shouldn't be surprised when people view it.

      Most of what's out there isn't by the person's choice -- crappy privacy controls, people reposting, revenge photos, and leaked e-mail signatures... most of what google picks up about the average person was put there by a corporation that is trying to monetize that private data by making it public.

      --
      #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  6. Re:Reliability v Gossip by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Hopi indians had an enhanced lexicon for the reliability of information, particularly when speaking about water. 1st hand, 2nd hand, 3rd hand information, how old it was and how reliable the source was judged to be all could be described using specific words.

    The origin of information reported is part of the morphology in Hopi, not the lexicon. It is reported by specific morphemes, not specific words. Any language can report such things with specific words, e.g. English "Mary is pregnant, I saw it myself" versus "Mary is pregnant, that's what John said."

    Furthermore, morphological encoding is hardly unique to the Hopi, as this typology is found in languages all over the world (including a number of European languages). See Aikhenvald's Evidentiality (Oxford University Press, 2005) for a survey. No need to patronizingly romanticize Native Americans.