Any Pee in Your Pool?

“Dude, you can’t take something bad off the Internet. That’s like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool." - Joe Rogan’s character on the TV series Newsradio

Visitors to Las Vegas are consoled by the slogan: “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” But a similar slogan might not be so comforting: “What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet.”

Stories of injustices done to people on account of their online record are easy to come by. But last week at a computer programmers’ conference, Adria Richards, a “software evangelist” for SendGrid with 14,000 Twitter followers, might have jumped the shark. Richards overheard a couple of men behind her making a series of risqué jokes about the subject matter of the talk they were all listening to. Fed up with rampant sexism in the programming community, she turned around, took a picture of them, then tweeted it to her followers and posted a scolding article on her blog.

The result? One of the men was fired from his developer job, creating a firestorm of controversy, a hacker uproar, and eventually Adria was fired from her job as well. A good summary of the story is on TechCrunch’s web site (and thanks to Joe Ruiz, the LinkedIn member who pointed it out in one of his comments on my post “You Can’t Shame a Crook”).

It would be great if people could just lighten up a bit, but our society has become a highly competitive meritocracy, with managers doing resumé-to-resumé battle, sporting their own brands, followings, and online reputations. Moreover, in the politically correct age we inhabit, the arbiters of these battles – whether employers, admissions boards, or government bureaucrats – reach for any “facts” at all that can substitute for taking the politically dangerous risk of using their own human judgment.

The biggest lesson for business managers in the Adria Richards story is that with reputation comes responsibility. If you carry a lot of influence, you have an obligation to use it wisely. Don't be tempted to shame someone else just for the personal satisfaction of doing so.

But I do believe there's reason to hope. Not long ago I had one of those difficult-to-win father-son discussions, in which I tried to warn my teenage son about the dangers of too much carefree online exuberance. “Remember,” I said, “When you’re 35 and trying to find a job, the person who interviews you will be able to call up whatever pictures you’ve posted or comments you’ve made online.”

But my advice only earned a condescending teenage look. “Dad,” he replied, “When I’m 35 and interviewing for a job, don’t you think the person who’s interviewing me will have their own pictures online?” Good point, son.

And perhaps my son has it exactly correct. Perhaps, once the current generation of business managers, thinkers, evangelists, and social-media novices leaves the stage, what will remain will be a more tolerant, open-minded society. Is it possible that the end of privacy will restore civility? Perhaps.

Perhaps we'll all just have to live with pee in the pool.