Are you standing naked in front of a window?

In a cost/benefit analysis, my social networks have engendered very little return for the surrendering of my privacy. If my web presence were to suddenly disappear, my life would not be affected one iota. Even the fancy new website I paid $250 for last year isn't visited by anyone who could get me any gigs. Though for some reason hope springs eternal and I am not considering taking it down any time soon.

I am quite sure that my entire life is an open book online, if you know where to look.
I used to go around airily declaring that I have nothing to hide, and as far as I was concerned, my life was an open book and I didn't care who looked at it. Now that my life is irretrievably an open book, I don't want people examining it. But it's too late. And as a non-celebrity, I don't get the advantage of tons of money in exchange for relinquishing my right to privacy.

It seems that my former boyfriend, the antisocial and defiantly geeky Ken, is the smartest kid in the class: he has never had any detectable web presence because he knows how to cover his tracks. He can't be googled. You can't even find a random post on a message board for people who like to fix old Volvos. I always suspected he was a hacker, though I had no proof. If that's what it takes to hide your cyberfootprint, then we're all in trouble (except for geeky teenage boys and adult males who act like geeky teenage boys.) Ken broke up with me via email (the last refuge of a coward) in 1998. Since this resulted in my having a nervous breakdown of sorts during which I was not in my right mind for some time, I attempted to stay in touch with him and force him to apologize for his shoddy treatment of me. These were the heady days of flaming as a sport, and to my surprise he allowed himself to get drawn into an email debate with me in which he wrote absurd self-justifying screeds before finally declaring me a stalker and closing up shop. By this time it was 2000, the year I met Curtiss, my enduring SO of 11 years. Even Curtiss, a programmer with a lot of web savvy and a healthy dose of paranoia, has not managed to erase his footprint. He is more than half convinced that "they" are out to get him and will one day show up at our door to drag him to prison for his left political views. But he has a FB page!
That's just asking for trouble!

I'm not saying it couldn't happen here. After all, we live in a corporatocracy, and 90% of the U.S. citizenry is unaware of it and the implications of it. Corporate rule is just one short step away from fascism and the revoking of all civil and constitutional rights, including freedom of speech. The electoral system is a joke.
Our President has to answer to Wall Street, just as if he were an old-style Republican.
And the new-style Republicans are nutbags. Every single one of them. Scary, fascist nutbags with a lot of corporate money behind them. We the people have already allowed telecommunications companies to give up the records of our phone calls to the government. There wasn't even any outcry. And the final absurdity, the final nail in the coffin of American democracy is this: the online security default is no security protection; you have to create security controls yourself if you want any personal info protected. The default is lack of privacy. And we are all putting up with this as though it were the "new normal," a hateful phrase created by right-wing propagandists to describe the current unacceptable unemployment rate. Why are we accepting their "new normal?" It's the opposite of normal. It's a metastasizing cancer
threatening to kill off any vestiges of democracy we have left. Just look at how they are gleefully going about dismantling the New Deal after 75 years of success.

Do we have any place to run and hide?

10 reasons to quit Facebook

1) Privacy issues. You really can't trust them.

2) It's a HUGE time waster.

3) I am not interested in 95% of the content.

4) Most of my friends are not really my friends.

5) Unlike MySpace, FB has not led to any gigs or CD sales.

6) I get annoyed by constant invites to other people's gigs. These people never come to my shows.

7) The constant bragging is repugnant.

8) Certain "friends" have me confused with someone who is actually interested in their pics with SO, cats, dogs, drumsets, peculiar tastes in music and literature.

9) At least an iPhone/iPad can be useful and TV entertaining (if you're going to waste time, you might as well be entertained.)

10) I have thus far resisted the urge to participate in Twitter or buy an iPhone or iPad. I CAN DO THIS.

However, it isn't clear whether it is even possible to quit FB. Some hard drive somewhere has an electronic dossier on you that can never be erased, or if it is, can easily be hacked into. And Google has even more on you than FB. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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