A friend of mine recently made his entire Facebook profile private for a few days until changing it back to its original setting.
When I asked if something he had happened, he told me that he had applied for a job interview and he was worried that if they looked him up online they would see that he was gay, and that it would cost him the job.
"Isn't that illegal," I asked.
"Well," he said, "It's illegal for them to outright deny me the job because I'm gay, but if they find out I'm gay, and decide they don't want to hire me, who's to know?"
Something like my friend's scenario isn't specifically a gay issue. Employers are going online to find out all sorts of things about their potential employees. But my friend doesn't have embarrassing photos of himself out drinking, or doing drugs. He doesn't have obscene wall posts or anything that would make him look like an unreliable worker.
Yet he was still worried about losing a job just because he's gay--and probably for good reason.
The new trend of bosses hunting around online has made it possible for old prejudices to be put into effect--albeit silently, thereby taking away the recourses of the person who isn't hired.
The Internet has become the new closet through which people grappling with their sexuality have to worry about stepping out of.
I experienced it myself when I went on Myspace after an absence of a few years. I was just curious to see if my page was still there, and after a few tries at the forgotten password, I managed to get access to my old account.
One of the late night comedians said it, and it's true--Myspace is sort of like the Internet's abandoned amusement park now that Facebook has taken over.
I planned on just deleting the page altogether, but there were some nice comments made by my friends and a few photos I liked, so I decided to just leave it up.
That was when I noticed that the Interested In box still said "Women."
Wow, I thought, it really has been a long time.
I corrected it and then logged off, never once thinking it would cause any trouble. After all, who goes on Myspace anymore anyway?
Within an hour, I received three phone calls from my mother. I'm out to her, but there are members of my family that I'm not close with who don't know I'm gay. It's not a conscious decision on my part, it's just that we never see each other and short of holding a family reunion to announce to everyone that I like boys, I figured it didn't matter or not whether they found out.
Had I known they'd be finding out through Myspace, I might have just had that family reunion.
One of my cousins had seen my updated profile, and called my aunt, who called my grandmother, who called my mom.
By the time my mom called me, the news was all over the family.
"I don't care that you're gay," my mom reiterated, "I just think there are better ways to let people know. Why even put that information out there?"
My mom means well, she really does. She was worried that being gay and out online means that some crazy guy might decide to track you down and attack you. These days, it's not an altogether illogical way of thinking.
Still, I can't past the Straight factor. If a straight person doesn't have to worry about posting photos of their spouse or significant other online, why should I have to?
It bothered me that I had underestimated the power of the Internet. I have a new joke amongst my friends that the biggest gossip we know is our own Facebook feed. It's almost as if social networking sites are designed to point out to people the juiciest and most revealing things that their friends or family are putting online. Yet I still thought I could throw a personal item about myself out there and it would just sink like a stone in a lake.
Well be careful, because those stones may sink for a moment, but after awhile, everything floats to the top.
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