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Comment by vkb | Hacker News Reader

The author writes, "Before I started looking for an apartment, I never gave much thought to the cumulative identity I had been presenting, or even performing, on the Internet. "

This is completely the opposite of my (also a millennial) experience. I blog on a regular basis, post things on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you. The amount of thought that goes into each post ("could this be misconstrued by an employer?" "if I post this, will it offend one of my friends?" "Could this retweet become viral?") is paralyzing and exhausting, but not sharing is just as hard.

I've written a post about this feeling [1], but I don't have any solution. As someone who enjoys sharing ideas through writing and meeting people online, but is also very aware of how mob-happy our online civic society has become, it is a hard position to be in.

[1] http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2014/01/the-snarling-crowd-in-th...

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> This is completely the opposite of my (also a millennial) experience. I blog on a regular basis, post things on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, what have you. The amount of thought that goes into each post ("could this be misconstrued by an employer?" "if I post this, will it offend one of my friends?" "Could this retweet become viral?") is paralyzing and exhausting, but not sharing is just as hard.

Shared feeling and thought process here. Sharing in this way has been a big part of my life.

My only 'solution' has been to scrutinize every word choice to ensure maximum sharing without allowing too much exposure. It is draining but, at least for me, has becomes second nature.

I occasionally long for an anonymous/ephemeral social network that is not completely full of garbage (I.e. 4chan). I have enough Twitter followers that everything I say is subject to intense scrutiny, and that's kind of annoying. I'm tempted to throw together a quick, anonymous network targeted for tech people, but I wouldn't have time to moderate it.

I very much feel this, and it's kept me from sharing online. It's easy to imagine worst case scenario, a la Justine Sacco. My online writing has become riddled with caveats and disclaimers, pandering to the least charitable readers. Poor style, I know.

It is actually extremely simple: Don't act online how you would not act in person.

I disagree. Online posts express tone poorly. It's much less dangerous to discuss controversial topics in person.

Yes, that is true, which is why wording is important. However, this article is not talking about a single post being taken out of context, it is about a systematic online persona that is affecting real life.

Except context is completely different online than in-person. Heck, online context is different for people using different devices and browsers.

In-person communication is rife with unspoken, yet understood, shared knowledge: body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, information about social standing between two individuals, etc.

Whereas we're still sorting out how to properly interact online, having only been doing it (at scale) for ~20 years.

This is probably pretty good advice for most, but I'm one of those with a dry, sarcastic, sense of humor, and that doesn't always translate well online (unless, perhaps, as a video).

Next step: Act like you want to be perceived by others.

I would say about a quarter of the things I type out on social media and elsewhere on the Internet don't get posted because I think about their implications and scrap the post.

Self censorship is one of social media's greatest accomplishments.

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