Personal Privacy in my Professional, Digital World

I love being a digital girl, conversationalist and social media maven.  I look forward to participating and adding value to social communities - be it link sharing on del.icio.us, group chatting on twitter, news sharing on clipmarks, idea sharing on my blog... (the list goes on and on).

That being said, I enjoy my personal life as well.  I like that I can share as much or as little as I feel comfortable with, whether it be my views on a political issue or the status of a personal relationships - I have a right to my selected privacy.  To me, social media is a professional space where I make new connections, connect others and most of all, learn from others. 

I've selected not to talk about my significant other in my social networks.  This may seem (to some) to be untruthful, but it was a choice I made professionally.  My boyfriend and I have very different passions and careers, and I like being independent of him in my work and online space.  This is not to manipulate or deceive my social networking male friends/followers.  However, former digital friend @ChuckAdkins feels very differently, which of course spurred this post. 

I *met* Chuck Adkins on twitter.  I often share my AIM and GTalk handles on twitter, so from there he picked up my username and we talked a little on instant messenger.  I told him early on about being involved with someone, as he was always overly complimentary and was messaging me more than most. Then after a couple weeks he stopped messaging me, and I didn't really think much of it.  But he did, and sought revenge on utterz and now twitter (click on the image below to view twitter conversation re: me being a "dick tease").

I am not writing this post because I care what Chuck thinks of me. Chuck is a potty-mouth loser who uses social networks to seek-out and hit on good looking girls.  He is not the first and undoubtedly will not be the last to do this, but all I have to say is -- Chuck watch what you say online, it lives forever.

   

Comments

[Annie]

Wow, what a creep. Please don't feel like you have to explain yourself, Julia. Of course you have a right to keep things about your life private.

Women should be able to be friendly online without being seen as a tease. Guys who think otherwise need to get a grip. Luckily I truly believe there are very few "Chucks" out there.

Good idea making this all as public as you have, too. Hopefully he'll slink away.

[Carrie]

Julia,

I'm so sorry. What a horrible thing to happen. Sadly, these are common everyday occurrences in the digital world. I had a similar experience on Facebook a few months back and it left me feeling really dirty and violated. Like you, I try to be careful about the kind of information I post, but I managed to pick up a slime ball of a stalker that just wouldn't let it go.

I think it's great that you've decided to go public about it. I just checked out the links you posted and you're absolutely right. Once it's out there, it's hard to take it back. Too bad he doesn't realize the damage he's causing himself by posting this kind of crap. Chuck sounds like a total loser.

I hope you can move on from this quickly and quietly.

[Amanda Gravel]

Is this guy serious? I can't even believe this is real. Julia, I applaud you for calling this guy out and remaining classy about it. Hopefully he'll slink away now, like Annie said, realizing he will never meet any girls through Twitter again.

What do you ladies think about creating a sort of "creep list" of guys like this who take things too far and are totally disrespectful and inappopriate? May be worthwhile...

[Ian]

Wow... just wow.

I don't understand how some people can be so strange. It is an interesting issue about how far social networking has come, but yet how far it still has to go. Some people may never be able to handle the virtual world or leverage networking tools properly.

Meeting and socializing with people online does not equate to dating and relationships. As Annie stated, some people just don't get it, and I agree that it was good for you to make this public, in this instance.

Be well.

[GeekMommy]

You know Julia, it kind of cracks me up to have some obnoxious jerk out there flinging accusations like 'you are only interested in men with fat wallets' - because I'm certainly not that - and yet, you were incredibly nice and friendly and open with me when I first met you on Twitter.

Guys like that get power from trying to make other people feel worse than they feel themselves.

Hopefully, he'll realize that he's just kind of waved a GIANT red flag for any woman out there he approaches from now on - if he doesn't like everything you do, he's liable to go of spouting obscenities and calling you horrid names.

Ah well. We know the truth. :)

[spoon]

What a friggin nut job. Er well lack of a job.
The fact that he's going through all of this trouble is disturbing. Me thinks someone needs to unplug and go do something productive.

[David Burn]

Sad. Pitiful. Gross...

I'm sorry this man is harassing you.

Yesterday, I watched Ariel Waldman test Yahoo Live and it started to border on the creepy as 100+ men "checked her out." She said at one point, "I don't want to be the cute web cam girl." And I believe her. But what if she is, or you are, the cute web cam girl? Then you have to fend off a bunch of creeps? What a mess.

[Jeff]

Yikes!

Thanks for sounding the "creep" alert.

Jeff

[mineral]

Hi Julia - for more on Chuck, see the following thread:

http://hotfudgedetroit.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=183

[markingegno]

You have my complete solidarity.
A man shouldn't act that way, neither if a girl does something wrong, and I'm sure you didn't.
So sorry.

[Ontario Emperor]

A couple of tangential observations:

As I've noticed once before, one of the reasons that I generally do not post under my real name is because of an unpleasant experience on Usenet in 2000. Live and learn.

In addition, it's understandable that you choose not to talk your significant other online, since that could potentially intrude on your significant other's privacy. I think that all of us explicitly refrain about revealing everything about our personal lives - or, more to the point, the personal lives of others - for that very reason.

And the last sentence of your post is VERY true.

[Curt Monash]

I don't see this as a privacy issue at all. There's very little privacy in cyberspace. Get over it.

The jerk called you names for Really Bad reasons. Lots of people spoke up in your support. That's how it works. You might have been able to go through the whole thing from beginning to end w/o revealing your boyfriend's identity, but if you couldn't, who cares?

You were nice to a loser who thinks there's no reason for males and females to communicate with each other unless sex is involved, and who has anger issues to boot. That's an issue online or off, and as a general rule it's much more dangerous offline. If you want to have 100s of followers, the odds of this kind of nonsense go up.

Try googling on my name (the top 250 hits or so are all about me). It's vastly complimentary. But there's some nasty stuff early on too. It comes with the territory.

The same is likely to be true of everybody.

CAM

[Christopher Penn, Financial Aid Podcast]

It's worth remembering that anything you put online can be distorted beyond recognition. Be careful what and how you present, how you manage your personal brand, etc.

Curt is right on: if you publish it online, it is not private. There is no such thing as selective privacy.

[Jonathan Trenn]

This is ridiculous.

Often in these he said/she said situations, there's things left unclear. Mixed signals. Both played a role.

Not here.

His own words reveal how off base he is. Bitch. Hoe. Dick tease. His intensity shows how obsessed he is with the ending of contact back in December.

And his decision to create an Utterz, "calling you out" over the ending of contact makes it abundantly clear that he's got major problems. You weren't dating. You were making "social media" contact via Twitter and IM.

He's showed the ugly side of social media. People should take notice.

[Cheapsuits]

I don't think you have to explain yourself at all. I saw a little of this unfolding on twitter and my first thought was that he was a lonely creep with a psycho, stalker bent. Sad really.

[will]

Chuck really seems like quite the catch. I can't believe you didn't swoon the very first time he called you names. I know I got all flustered just reading it.

[Nathan Rein]

Julia - you have my sympathy for having to deal with this individual. Things like this can potentially be really stressful. And especially post Kathy Sierra, you never know how far someone's going to try to push you.

I actually have a technical question -- how did you make those Twitter screenshots?

[Julia]

I favorite tweets, go to my favorites page and screen capture as many tweets as I can, scroll down and do it again until I get all the tweets I wanted to capture and then i use Dabble (application for a Mac) to combine the images. It's kind of tedious but i am getting better at it.

I guess a simpler way would be to favorite tweets then PDF the favorites page.

:)

[Julia]

Also thank you everyone for your support and kind words regarding this situation. I really appreciate it and it reminds me how many wonderful digital friends I have.

:)

[David Fisher]

Dear god. What a freakshow. I always appreciated your online/real life separation and I've taken it as a model that I use myself to have something that almost resembles a private life online.

All of those comments he made are obviously completely baseless and just show that he gets way to wrapped up in his online ventures. Overall he seems to be a giant freakshow.

I hope that this is the last, and the worst of such encounters that you have online. People can be assholes

[George Bolam (Twitter id.. tindle)]

Among the many aspects of Twitter that appeal to me is the generally non predatory mix of male and female company..Twitter is a place I can enjoy without feeling any of that kind of pressure..yes, sometimes, it can get a little flirty, but that's generally understood as a little bit of tongue in cheek, harmless, leg pulling between friends..or, at least, that's how I see it, on the odd occasions it happens.

It's nice to feel relaxed and comfortable, and enjoy the company of interesting, bright and stimulating people, and enjoy an occasional harmless giggle along the way.. Anyone who uses Twitter with a predatory agenda is making a big mistake, in my opinion.

There is never any need to be insolent, rude, insulting or offensive, whatever the context of a relationship, or whatever the medium it is conducted in...if you misunderstood the intentions of another person, well hard luck, you got it wrong, and you should extracate yourself gracefully. You should not resort to gratuitous name calling and offence.

Clearly, Mr. Adkins misunderstood the situation, and reacted in the manner of one whose universe is centred in his underpants. Not his fault, really..if your brain lives in your drawers, there's only one example it has to follow..that of your dick.

Enough said.

Take care, Julia..Regards, George.