New Web Service Allows Students To Bury Their Horrible Internet Past Deep Down, Like A Repressed Memory

Rob Fox12 years ago

You know that picture of you where you’re blackout drunk and punting a ceramic baby Jesus you stole from a manger scene? How about that picture from forty minutes later in the emergency room with a shard of life sized baby Jesus’ face sticking out of your bleeding foot? What about the video that captures your less than dignified, post-beating, half-conscious, vomit covered, security escorted exit from a country music concert? Remember that? And what about your “dead baby” Halloween costume, complete with a Casey Anthony sidekick? Ring a bell?

Yeah, well, all of that is still going to be on the internet, forever letting the world know how awful of a human being you are. But fortunately for you, the online picture books of your misdemeanors and felonies, also known as social media, may no longer be the very first thing that shows up when potential future employers inevitably Google your name. That picture of you letting your girlfriend grip and rip a batch of your DNA onto the floor of a bus that children would be riding in less than twelve hours later will now appear just under your résumé.

A new trend has sprung up: universities offering online tools to help students “scrub” their online image.

Does that mean girls can stop changing their Facebook profiles to [First Name] [Middle Name] and I can stop forgetting their last names forever? Also, interesting fact, every girl born between 1984 and 1993 was either given the middle name Marie or Catherine.

The service, called BrandYourself, could prove infinitely useful to pretty much any reader of this site. Let’s face it, we’ve all done horrendous things, and many of those things have made their way to the internet. That’s because we all have terrible, shortsighted friends who are amused by our really bad decisions.

But apparently it is not only your own deplorable actions and blackout deeds that may appall employers. In fact, you could be an upstanding citizen, the sort of person who would never have a friend document you upper-decking the bathroom at a GDI’s house party, and still suffer if someone who has the same name as you spent their college days conducting their own personal moral holocaust.

Samantha Grossman wasn’t always thrilled with the impression that emerged when people Googled her name. “It wasn’t anything too horrible,” she said. “I just have a common name. There would be pictures, college partying pictures, that weren’t of me, things I wouldn’t want associated with me.”

If you have a job interview, meet your potential employers, they Google your name, see pictures of someone else doing awful shit, somehow think it’s you, and then don’t give you the job, don’t feel bad. You don’t want to work for anyone that stupid anyway.

Employer 1: Was that the most recent interviewee who just left?

Employer 2: Yeah, he was great. Real good interview.

Employer 1: Oh, that’s wonderful. What was his name?

Employer 2: Actually I’m about to Google his name right now, to make sure he doesn’t have any sordid secrets he neglected to mention. His name is “Jack Ripper.”

(Googles Jack Ripper)

(Gasps)

(Starts crying and vomiting into trash can under desk)

Employer 1: WHAT!?!?

Employer 2: Oh God! Oh sweet merciful Jesus!

(Throws up again)

Employer 1: What is it!?!?!

Employer 2: According to this, that man who was just in my office murdered at least five prostitutes in one of the most famous killing sprees in history!

Employer 1: Are you sure it’s the same guy?

Employer 2: Well it says that the murders happened in the late 19th Century but since this is the first thing that popped up when I Googled his name, I HAVE TO BELIEVE IT NO MATTER WHAT!

Employer 1: Agreed. It looks like Mr. prostitute dismembering and possibly immortal Jack Ripper won’t be working for Matel Toys any time soon. Sick fuck. He probably wanted to play with the Barbies, reminding him of those poor girls he murdered.

But really though, all of you should probably get an account, you sick bastards. Just be glad TFM doesn’t make you submit under your real names. You’d all be eternally un-hirable.

[Source]