I missed this one last week but it really needs a post. I know, full-time job, blogging, running my dog’s presidential campaign. I’m a busy woman. I missed it.
But it’s a great post so here.
Say that a blogger gets fired from his or her day job for blogging. (Recent high profile media examples here and here.) It is a common enough tale to become almost a cliche.
But what would your reaction be if you found out a spiteful blogger, for no other reason than to fuck you over and with whom you had some petty online disagreement, went and outed you to your corporate overlords who didn’t take too kindly to your potty mouth and intemperate opinions? You get shit-canned and your online arch-nemesis is crowing over his/her “victory”.
What would your reaction be?
Sarcastro asks what would you do?
Check out Katherine Coble’s comments in the thread as well. If you recall the Kirking incident from last year, she’s got a bit of knowledge on this.
If you get caught because of your own stupidity (not that blogging from a work ‘puter isn’t pretty dumb to begin with) then you have no one to blame but yourself. But, if someone rats you out, well…revenge is a dish best served by a netserver.
I used to work for a major telecom who shall remain nameless (their initials are VZ) and had a supervisor tell me that if she caught me using my notebook on company time she’d see that I was forbidden to bring it on the premises–I was hoping she would so I could use it for a test case, but she never was quite that stupid.
People screwing people over, as in the case you cite, well, they usually get theirs, sooner or later.
The reality is that you simply be careful about what you post under your own name. Companies that are technically savvy at all go to Facebook and LinkdIn and Google to find out about you online. That’s life. It’s not an invasion of privacy if you spread crap everywhere online that you go.
[…] hard to believe that in 2008, newsrooms are still firing reporters for their extra-vocational […]
It just pleases me so much that “Kirked” and “Kirking” have somewhat become semi-well known blog vernacular (and as well they should!).