RULE 28

Somebody may be watching.…

Every time you log onto the Internet, including sites like My Space and Facebook, you should think about the movie archvillain who sneers, “You have no idea who you are dealing with.” On the net that is literally true.

When you post something on the World Wide Web, you have no idea who might be reading or seeing it, and you have absolutely no control over how it will be used. Brag about your weekend of bingeing and hooking up on My Space, and chances are that the prospective employer who will be interviewing you on Monday is adding this juicy information to your file. (Don’t count on the job.) When you post your picture, or rate the junior girls as “hot or not,” the posting could be downloaded by classmates, a neighbor, a sexual predator, or an assistant principal. You might even get a call from the father of a girl whose legs you said were fat. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

This is also a very good argument for never doing anything in front of a Web-cam that you wouldn’t do onstage at a school assembly.

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“Conscience,” H.L. Mencken once observed, “is that inner voice that warns us that somebody is looking.”

What if everybody were looking? If you are not sure about getting a moral compass, try this: when you are deciding whether to do something, imagine how you will look on the front page of the newspaper. (For purposes of this chapter, let’s assume that people still actually read newspapers, but if that seems too old-fashioned, feel free to substitute Inside Edition, The Daily Show, or a particularly juicy posting on the Internet.)

You will embarrass not just yourself, but also everyone else who has an investment in you, starting with your parents. Whether it is driving drunk or cheating on a test, lighting up a joint in the backseat of your buddy’s car, calling a stripper for the frat party, fudging your taxes, or participating in a hazing ceremony involving underwear, blindfolds, and cell-phone cameras—things look different in the morning and a lot different in black-and-white, or live on videotape at eleven o’clock.

In a zero-tolerance world, private slips can become public scandals, and you can’t count on people in authority to cut you any slack. So when you are making your choices, ask yourself. How would this look to other people? How would I explain it to my parents? My brothers and sisters? My friends? My classmates? My coach? My colleagues? My neighbors? My girlfriend/boyfriend? Or people I just meet in the Laundromat?

Would you be able to explain it in a way that would make them all see it your way? Would they get the joke? Or would they wonder what you could possibly have been thinking?

Of course, at the time, they all thought they had a good idea:

The high school students who put laxative in their teacher’s coffee and now face criminal charges.

The members of the girls’ soccer team whose underwear initiation is on every cable channel.

The high school basketball team captain who will miss the state tournament because someone posted on the Internet a picture of him chugging a beer.

The ex-valedictorian who posted obscene photoshopped pictures of school staffers on MySpace.

The firefighter who’s been arrested for having child porn on his computer.

The NFL player who has to explain (starting with his wife, then the parents, then police) why he was in the hot tub with teenage girls from a local Catholic high school.

The lawyer who “borrowed” the funds he was supposed to keep in trust for one of his clients.

The CEO who has to explain how $200,000 of his company’s funds got spent on his birthday party.

Occasionally, you will encounter someone who will tell you that we shouldn’t care about what other people think. But unless you plan to live in a remote desert hermitage, this is nonsense.

What makes all of this even scarier is that modern technology has created the “permanent record” that teachers have been using for generations to scare kids. Except, now it really is permanent, and all you have to do is Google it.