Saturday, March 8, 2008

Is Polly Saturday's Child

I just love the world of Blogging! It's so informative, fun, practical and it's also a great way of meeting people and communicating with those you do know. However, it can also be a mine field. Take the area of social networking sites for instance; they are potentially dangerous places.

While it might be cool to boast about how many pints you can scull on a Saturday night; it's probably best to keep this type of personal information for your immediate circle as it can lead to all kinds of problems. It's not just your mates that are checking you out! I recently trawled, quite by accident, some BEBO pages.

I was impressed with some of them, but it seems the majority of pages are run by immature and imprudent folk who are unaware that they are attracting all kinds of unwelcome attentionl. I myself felt like a peeping Tom, which is ridiculous if you're using a public amenity; which BEBO is.

Sadly I came across a page belonging to a couple of boys I am acquainted with, both of whom are well liked and seem to be decent enough. One of them lurrrrves alcohol so much that he found it necessary to make constant references to it, including anecdotes of party antics and photo's to boot.

The other is quite charming, a good student and a keen sportsman and has won a number of awards locally and within the school, however, his BEBO page is simply a disgrace and does not show him in his best light!It would appear that a young man I know personally can't string two words together without using profane language - over here it's called F'ing & B'linding!

I doubt if his headmaster, whom I also know, or any prospective employer would be too impressed. This of course is one of the problems that job applicants face today; while positions are outnumbered by applicants employers have to find some way of determining if one is more
suitable than the next. This is where they turn to the likes of BEBO for help; in this instance both of the boys I referred to earlier are in deep trouble.

Luckily not all the pages are like this. I found a number of kids in the village whose pages and sites are perfectly respectable. I still felt like a voyeur, but maybe not quite so off as when viewing the party animals pages!

It really is important though to remember that anything you want to keep private should remain that. The internet is not the place for sharing deep emotional journey's unless you are guarded about what content you publish. It is so easy to overlook the fact that once it's out there it can't be retracted, the spider's have already been out there picking up on your every word and thought and it will turn up somewhere, even if you have since deleted your content or indeed your whole site.

That's Polly's Internet Health Warning finished now, as I am beginning to sound like an old one, and while I'm well and truly on my way by now; I am not quite there yet...

Going back to the title of this post, I am proud to announce that I am indeed Saturday's child. I recently met a lady who blogs by the name of Friday and it is because of her that I now know which day of the week I was born on; she's got this cute little calculator widget on her blog which worked it out for me. I still don't understand the significance of my wanting to be Friday's child, but what the heck...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Practically everyone who has used that widget writes to me or writes about which child they are and they usually want to be another child. I have a friend that I had to make an honorary Tuesday's child because she wanted to be full of grace. So, I hereby dub thee an Honorary Friday's child. *kiss, kiss* :)

Just today my best friend and I were talking about how we've been every single of of those children at some point or another ... I'm guessing that's true of all of us.

I know what you mean about putting yourself "out there" on the internet. Kids don't think. It's frightening. It's akin to "taking candy from a stranger" -- don't make yourself a target, right?

Thanks so much for visiting!

Polly Pierce said...

I suppose being a Saturday's child means that despite the Fibro/ME, I am at heart A WORKER!

I just hope that the kids I was referring to in this post are as lucky as I have been and that their indiscretions on the web don't catch up with them.

It used to be a big bad world out there, but now it's getting smaller every day thanks to the wonders of modern tecnology. It's not just predator's these kids have to watch out for, sometimes its themselves. Scary thought, isn't it?

Thanks for being such a refreshing visitor, it's a pleasure to hear from you!