Hey Blogger, Don't Be Stupid

Oxford University is now perusing the Facebook website for students who rat out their own misdeeds online. This may seem like an invasion of privacy, but it's just like talking about what you did in a bar, except at this bar, other patrons can search out the surrounding conversations by keywords to see if there's anything interesting being discussed. Bloggers and people using the social networking sites need to learn a little common sense. If you don't want anyone to know what you're doing in real life, don't put it on the internet. It's like dancing in the nude in front of an open window in an urban neighborhood and then being shocked that you caught someone gawking.

Of course there's ways to brag about your less-than-professional exploits without being too stupid. Keep such naughty musings entirely separate from sites that contain any identifiable personal information. That means don't mention your real name, don't include your real e-mail. And this doesn't mean make a page on your normal account and just not link to it from your other pages. www.bigdumbass.com/sillystuff.html is still obviously you even if you can't get to that page from your regular BigDumbAss.com blog or homepage, you big dumb ass.