IP Democracy: Woe to Those Who Have "Bad Google"

Courtesy of Mark Evans, this funny piece from Canada’s National Post about a new social woe: Bad Google. Bad Google can afflict all of us and consists of embarassing entries that pop up when someone types your name in the Google search box.

It’s not only seriously bad information, such as an arrest or public disgrace, that can haunt us. Stupid items, such as blog entries written in one’s adolescence or satirical writings, can cause great discomfort if the wrong person finds them.

The article describes a writer identified only as “Ed” who wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on erectile dysfunction and to his great dismay, that article appears near the top of Google searches on his name.

“I don’t know who looks you up on Google, but I guess it’s mostly old friends thinking, ‘Hey, I wonder what ever happened to Ed? What’s this? Oh dear, it looks like Ed has erectile dysfunction.’ “

Another writer, Sarah Marchildon, has been confronted with ardent emails from posterior aficionados ever since she wrote an article that included a funny photo of her (clothed) “big butt.” As it turns out, her article ranked third for quite some time when someone searched the term “big butt.”

But Mark Evans tries to put a semi-serious spin on this, warning that “bad Google” could affect the body politic.

As a colleague pointed out, anyone with political aspirations will have to know enough to restrain themselves from a very early age not to write or say anything online that could come back to snap them in the ass down the road. It could lead to some very dull politicians or perhaps some very smart and devious politicians who do all of their bad stuff offline.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 13, 2006 12:56 PM to IP Democracy