Posting on MySpace today shouldn't screw us tomorrow

I just got into the whole MySpace thing recently and I admit that I'm hooked. It has far better features than Facebook, has access to over 32 million people and offers unfettered contacts with scores of bands. What's not to like? Even the name of it is narcissistically stimulating-MySpace. "This is my space." "MY SPACE!"

But last week the Chicago Tribune ran an article "When what happens on MySpace doesn't stay on MySpace" that details the many bad things that can happen when information placed on personal sites such as MySpace or Facebook become visible to the public. Many high schools, colleges and businesses have now begun to conduct background checks on potential/current students or employees in order to find out more about them. What this means is that too much of the wrong information on Yourspace can hurt Yourfuture.

As college students, this is cause for concern. Some of us have a tendency to be candid about some pretty incriminating things in our profiles--blogs of discontent with work or school, pictures of last weekend's party, etc.--that can come back sooner or later to haunt us. We have a tendency to mythologize our "coolness" for all our peers to see, and we rarely give second thought to a fifty-something boss finding our profile only to find out that, not only do we hate his guts, but we also like to do body shots off of exotic dancers.

But should we really be ashamed? We are young and should be having the time of our lives before the pink elephant of responsibility becomes too large to ignore. Only true criminals really have anything to hide. (On that note, it would be wise of us to refrain from bragging about underage drinking, vandalism, or some other misdemeanor that we partook in the preceding night. Some kids, sadly, are beginning to find themselves in handcuffs because now many police departments routinely scan Ourspaces to find who graffitied the water tower or where the underage party was last night). But if we get wasted with our friends or feel the need to vent about some personal injustice in the classroom or at the office without being racist or derogatory, should fear of getting in trouble stop us? It's Ourspace, not Theirspace.

We use sites like MySpace because, in this fast-paced, tech-savvy world, we need an outlet that still allows us to...hang out. If we have to work on the web, and we're told that we should shop on the web, then why can't we at least play on the web without the fear of scrutiny or victimization. I guess this means that, yes, Big Brother is watching us, but this big brother is an older generation that's semi-removed from the world of online connection sites. And it's what they can't understand and what we think is fun that is what they are willing to use to try to bring us down.
But that generation will pass into retirement and eventually we will be the ones hiring employees, admitting students or patrolling the suburbs. And by that time nearly everyone, for better or worse, will have Theirspaces and the subsequent juvenile skeletons poking out of the closets of their online domain. And maybe then we won't have to take everything in life so seriously anymore.