Disposable Personas

One of my peeves is when I'm out to dinner with friends and they're complaining about the service or the food and when the server comes by and asks, 'How is everything?' they respond with a cheery, 'Great!'

Until this era of social media 'review' pages, it was just annoying, but now we have this incredible outlet for the passive aggressive diner. I wouldn't be surprised if sometime I'm out with these two-faced diners and they're on their iPhones posting a scathing review while at the same time they're smiling while thanking the server.

The anonymity or even just perceived anonymity of the Internet lets people vent, kind of like I'm doing right here (except you can find me if you want to). But as many people vent under assumed names and aliases, they have the ability comfortably scathe a restaurant without responsibility.

This lack of responsibility has me concerned lately about anonymity on the web. I'm fairly reserved in what I post on my Conquent account because it reflects not only on me, but on my company. While I could use Conquent as a platform to randomly rip into companies, there are real-world consequences for being a butthead. (My ripping into companies isn't really random… but I may still be a butthead…)

Of course, there are people who start companies, run them into the ground, and close them down to avoid the consequences of their actions just as there are people in the world who declare bankruptcy every few years or change jobs either quitting or getting fired regularly, just moving along and never learning and never getting better at anything but covering their tracks.

Those are, of course, extreme examples, but I wonder how this world of disposable online personas will lead to more complications in the not-so-disposable world of business and personal credibility…