If your Facebook career is anything like mine, this has probably happened to you a few times: You’re casually perusing your Wall posts or status updates, when all of a sudden *WHAM* you run into some ridiculous position or opinion, only to be surprised — sometimes even dismayed — to see that the person spouting the foolishness (which is contrary to your own, naturally) is a friend… or more usually, an acquaintance of some sort. Sometimes you get past it, sometimes you don’t.

This is nothing new: There are plenty of analogous situations in the offline world — you see a bumper sticker that expresses an opinion on some controversial political or social issue. Or, you’re just talking to someone and they come out of left field with a statement like, “I think that rocks should have the right to vote.” Or in my own case, there’s a nearby house with the same number as mine — I occasionally get their mail, and I’m pretty sure I can guess their politics, just from the type of solicitations they get. (Hey, it’s printed on the outside of the envelope.)

Most commonly, these kinds of surprises happen when we cross societal contexts — you’re hanging out socially with someone whom you only know from work, or some other situational relationship: dog park, vendor, delivery person, storekeeper. Of course, they’re real people with full-fledged personalities, but you’re only exposed to a small bit of it, and your image of the person is formed around that particular aspect. So the unexpected disclosures are a form of TMI — call it “personality leakage” (a singularly unappealing name), because other aspects of their personality sneak out and become visible to you.

Again, this is an example of where the online, social, networking component simply makes a real-world behavior more visible, distributable, searchable, and archivable.

Now, this isn’t specifically a Facebook post, though I guess it is related to the recent changes to Facebook privacy setting (where the default is shifting to “default public”). I think it speaks to the desire for socialization that occurs even in specialized online networks, and it also ties into the kind of overall democratization — the blending of social contexts — that happens when you link siloed communities together in a kind of federated network (a fancy way to describe what happens when multiple single-interest group– say a Facebook group, Twitter list, or less formalized grouping — all publish to a common space: Your Wall.)

Does this mean that you should dump everything out on the table, and do a full disclosure the first time, every time? No, that would be silly. Does it mean you shouldn’t express any opinions? Ditto on the silliness.

What it boils down to, I think, is that in a general-purpose platform (like what Facebook has turned into — a kind of personal CRM dashboard for a lot of folks) one still needs to tread down that tricky middle path, where they continue to be a real person, while at the same time, being aware of what you say (especially in the hot-button areas of sex, politics, and religion), and how it might be seen by other folks.

Again, since most of us aren’t that good at compartmentalizing our personalities so we can tailor them to specific audiences and locations, we all have to deal with some amount of personality leakage.

Have your own experiences with personality leakage, either on the giving or receiving side? Leave a comment.

It’s been pointed out that Virginia has the highest rate of custom vanity plate use in the US. It’s probably because getting a vanity tag is so easy and cheap to do here, which has resulted in a kind of self-reinforcing vanity plate culture. However, I’ve never really been tempted to get one. Why not?

I like the idea of maintaining a state of relative anonymity while I’m inside my car, in case someone I know sees me doing something stupid while driving. As long as that person doesn’t see my face and hasn’t memorized my license plate, I have a degree of plausible deniability: “Sorry, no, I don’t recall cutting you off — it must have been some other driver in a red hatchback.” Having a vanity plate as a unique identifier removes all doubt.

However, thinking that a regular license plate gives you anonymity on the road relies on equal parts polite social fiction and self-delusion. You’re out in public, and if you want to be an anonymous, you’ll have to drive a silver Honda Accord with tinted windows and James Bond-ian rotating license plates. It’s only the fact that you’re seen by people who don’t know you that gives you limited anonymity, and that diminishes as you drive regular routes or are close to your usual destinations.

All this babble about vanity plates is just a setup for the first part of my metaphor — in the real-world, during fleeting encounters on the road, it can be easier to get away with transgressions, without having them come back at you.

In fact, unless you’re a recognizable celebrity of some sort, or someone in your immediate social circle sees you in the act, you’ve got a good deal of functional anonymity — unless you choose to identify yourself with a vanity tag, wearing a t-shirt with your name on it, proudly sport your Congressional intern badge while you’re out and about town, or leave an event with your “Hello, my name is” sticker on your shirt.

(Of course, now the ubiquity of cell phone cameras and mobile internet has changed this dynamic. But work with me on this.)

Online, of course, it’s a while ‘nother ballgame. Because of search and socially-shared status, everyone is wearing their vanity tag online. So what you do is theoretically always tied to who you are. Which means you need to be on your best behavior all the time, especially for people in business, or may be in business someday.

It’s a cliche now: the momentary lapse in judgment leads to a post that is widely spread, easily searchable, and forever archived.

I suppose this is just a way to restate the question, “Can you keep your personal persona separate from your business persona online?” and the answer remains the same: No, not really.

Without revisiting the questions about surveillance societies and personal branding and all those other issues, I think the primary takeaway is just about awareness — the relative anonymity we had is diminishing, even for those of use who don’t choose (in certain venues) to broadcast who we are. And online, it never really existed in the first place.

What do you think? Leave a comment below. (Anonymous, pseudonymous, or eponymous — your choice.)

It should hardly need repeating at this point: When you post stuff to the Internet, people will see it, and quite possibly use it in ways that you don’t intend. And yet, either people keep finding new ways to make the same mistakes, or other people keep finding ways to use that information.

Two recent cases in point:

* Project ‘Gaydar’: This Boston Globe article looks at some MIT researchers who analyzed Facebook friending patterns and figured out that they could pretty accurately predict which men were gay, even if they didn’t list it in their profile. They did this by looking at the subjects’ Facebook friends; apparently, gay men have more gay male friends than straight men, so by looking at someone’s followers and plugging them into a computer model, they could infer who was gay. (It didn’t work as well with bisexuals and lesbians.)

The reason it works is that people with similar interests tend to cluster. Call it birds of a feather flocking together, or guilt by association. Either way, it shows another way that indirect information — in this case, the company you keep — can be used to reveal more information about you than you might have intended, especially when that information is accessible online.

(A further example comes from another researcher cited in the article who used predictive models, combined with follower information, to predict political affiliation based on music preference. Again, while it may be an old stereotype to associate, say, the Grateful Dead with progressives, and while you might miss a few outliers — like noted Republicans who are Deadheads — the ability to cross-check against the stated preferences of your online friends, over whom you have little control — is a new thing to worry about.)

Although I’m sure many audience research, political polling, and marketing types are salivating at the possibilities, any privacy-valuing individual should take pause. Though the logical answer — don’t post information under your own name, which basically means don’t post anything — seems pretty draconian. [link via Slashdot]

* Online Compliments Can Haunt You, Too: From the Wall Street Journal, a lawyer who represents corporations in employment cases recommends they tell employees not to post recommendations for laid-off co-workers on job networking sites (like LinkedIn), on the theory that if someone is let go for cause, but gets good online recommendations from co-workers, it might be used as legal fodder.

You know the mom-ish advice — if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. I guess we can amend that to simply say, “Don’t say anything at all.”

Online job recommendations are strange beasts — as Jeremiah Owyang notes, their value is already dubious, since people are only likely to ask for a recommendation when they think they’ll get a good one, but this is a new twist. Most of us are hesitant to give a less-than-shining recommendation if the other person can see it; take away the ability to give a good recommendation, and all that’s left is the mushiest of litigation-proof recommendation letters, or simply a very corporate verification of employment dates.

It’s easy to say, “Just stop posting stuff online,” though in practice, it’s getting to be like saying “so just don’t drive” or “just don’t talk on the phone” — you can do it, but the cost is increasing.

Got a comment (that’ll add to your online body of work, possibly lending more insight into your personality and purchasing habits)? Leave a comment.