your name, your brand, your future shame

Wikipedia registration offers this grim warning:

You should strongly consider choosing a username that is not connected to you. All edits to the encyclopedia are permanently recorded and publicly visible in the history of any page that you edit, as well as on discussion pages. If you use your real name or a username that you go by elsewhere, people seeking information about you online may see your username and others' comments on your editing. If your editing happens to cause concern, there may be discussion linked to your username.

Frightened enough? Why stop there? By extension, the whole internet could be viewed as a giant Repository of Potential Future Embarrassment. You don't need to be a resigning state governor or a well-known, yet shunned author to know that a Twitter rampage is not the ephemeral moment of relief that it feels like.

You may not be able to delete those blog comments you left while under the influence, so Google Alerts will always remind you of that special moment. And if you think your "25 Things" note on Facebook is a wee bit embarrassing now, keep in mind that the Wayback Machine will preserve it for all of your future employers, your descendants, and all of their potential spouses and employers, for the rest of the life of the internet. (Actually, I don't know if that's true. At the time of this writing, Facebook still doesn't allow access to most of the content of your account to people outside your friends or your region. But I have heard talk that Facebook will be removing that "walled garden" paradigm someday. And Facebook already has a long memory. Don't expect it to hide the old stuff, just because it was better guarded in the past.)

I've started a few blogs since moving to Israel, but under various noms de plume that allowed me some plausible deniability. As a result, I spent so much time and effort trying to mask my identity and that of everyone I wrote about, the places I had lived, and the careers of my family members, that I abandoned them.

Obviously, that's not going to work here. This is my real (albeit Israelified) name. The name of my other blog is also my Twitter handle, my Google profile, and Facebook URL.

In other words, once I've goofed up, written a passage of substandard prose, it's done. I'm handing a loaded gun to all my future prospective employers, partners, and clients. I haven't even published this post yet, and I can already feel the eyes of my unborn children, mortified with embarrassment.

So, (he said, as if reaching a conclusion) I've decided that the only remedy is to go with it, concentrating on the journey rather than the destination, on the process rather than the product. Maybe the good posts will dilute the stinkers.

What about my personal brand and the shame of my progeny? Not to worry. My Wikipedia editor name will never, ever be associated with all this.