When you first hear Blake Shelton sing the opening lines of the ballad, "Who Are You When I'm Not Looking," it sounds a little creepy, almost as if the country music singer plans to spy on his girlfriend to see what she's up to when he is not around. As the song progresses, however, it becomes clear Shelton is not a stalker, he is just a sweet guy who wants his girlfriend to feel comfortable letting him see all her quirks.
Despite knowing the benign message behind Shelton's words, every time I hear his song it makes me wonder who is looking. And what do they see?
This paranoia most likely stems from the fact that I have been in a permanent state of job application for the last four months and am hung up on the image employers have of me.
On the one hand, I know dealing with this worry by cutting out social media profiles is not an option. The types of companies I am looking at want to know I have social media profiles and see proof I am capable of using them effectively. In fact, the more conspicuous my online presence is, the better.
On the other hand, the more conspicuous your online presence, the more careful you have to be. I like to think I keep a pretty tight lid on all my social media profiles. I use the privacy settings; I don't post any pictures I wouldn't be OK with strangers seeing, and I do not accept friend requests from people I don't know. Still, I worry that things can fall through the cracks. I can only control so much.
Last summer, I had my first "I Googled you" experience with some interesting results. In addition to my regular job, I babysat during the summer to make extra cash, and one of the families I worked for had never met me in person before my first day. As the mother walked me through their house, she mentioned she had Googled me before hiring me to watch her three small children. This made perfect sense to me - I was, after all, a complete stranger - but I was disturbed that the results at first made me appear a little questionable.
A website I had never contributed to, or even seen, came up in the search because someone on their discussion forum had posted the link to an old column of mine and discussed it. The content of the website and the posters comments were both innocent enough, but the column in question was my discussion of women's education entitled "We Burnt the Bras for a Reason" and the site, which was devoted to gender issues, contained the dreaded S-E-X word in its title. So, some of the first links mentioning my name appeared to be about underwear and sex. Great.
Luckily, this mom actually clicked the link and read the content rather than ruling me out based on URL titles. Still, ever since I have wondered about the parts of my online image which I cannot control. How many busy human resource employees will take the extra moment this mom did? What about all the other Katie McNallys out there? What if one of them does something scandalous, and it gets attributed to me by accident?
In case you're curious, the website I mentioned no longer comes up in the first pages of a search for me. That's not my doing. I think their forum is just refreshed periodically so you can no longer see that particular post.
Nevertheless, I have made a habit of Googling myself regularly and staying up to date with all the changes to the privacy settings on my various social media accounts. Unlike Shelton's girlfriend, these days I assume someone is always looking.
Katie's column runs biweekly Tuesdays. She can be reached at k.mcnally@cavalierdaily.com.
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