googling colleen caffrey.

when i was younger, i wasn't really aware of the reach of my web presence. every few years, i end up googling myself, each time for different reasons usually. when i first googled myself, i did not hold any social media accounts. i remember finding other individuals with the same names, but then i also recall finding an online record that was actually me from a town charity walk which i participated in, simply listing my finish time. the next time i googled myself, i was probably a sophomore in high school, and had  quite a few social media sites: facebook, a personal myspace, a photography myspace, a picasa web albums account, and a purevolume account. because i wasn't really supposed to have a myspace account, i thought i had set my privacy settings in such a way that no one would be able to find me. little did i know that those settings only mattered within the myspace search, and not within google. of my five accounts, i remember three or four displaying in the search. i quickly went back and reviewed all settings. i ended up deleting my purevolume and both myspace accounts soon after (or so i thought). the next time i googled myself, i was applying to be a resident assistant. after hearing stories that reslife would search people's social media presence while in the hiring process, i scrubbed my facebook clean so to speak, untagging all incriminating photos and tightening up my privacy controls even moreso. when i googled myself, i was shocked to discover that my photography myspace account was still up, after i believed i had deleted it. i scrambled to remember the email and password i used, and deleted it(after seeing how many requests and spam messages had accumulated). after googling myself earlier tonight, i was relieved to see colleen caffrey the drummer from atlanta coming up most frequently. when i looked at images, i was not very surprised to see my facebook default picture present in the search, as i have that as one of the few things that display when you search for me in facebook. i was however, surprised to see an image i had created and set as my default for a spraygraphic account that i had set up to receive the newsletter, but never really utilized. i traced the image back to the account, and deleted it, yet tonight when i searched, the image still appears. 

growing up in this explosion of social media, i feel as though i have grown to become more responsible for my decisions in posting web content and creating accounts. i have always been somewhat cautious about what i have posted, but i feel as though now i have matured myself, i am even more discrete. i think its sort of related to the generational discussion we were having last class... as a young teenager, you tend to rebel and live without consequences. as you mature, you tend to take more responsibility for your actions, and recognize the consequences each and every choice you make may have on your future.