I recently shuttered my main Facebook account.
I spent a decade building a community of family, friends & colleagues.
The impetus to do so was started at a conference.
A person commented if I wasn't seen hanging out at the bar, then it wasn't a conference.
The judgy comment made me angry. Still does.
I realized.
All this person knew was me at a conference. They had no conception of what my actual life was like.
I thought to myself.
Fine.
I'll provide an unvarnished feed for a year. I'll detail what it means to a single parent & an academic. Then judge me.
That feed turned into almost a decade.
The feed served its purpose.
My feed sensitized people to the travails of being a single parent in academe & provided a look at my opinions on life.
My unvarnished feed made me more human & approachable to a new generation of scholars in my field.
However.
My unvarnished feed was deemed unbecoming by some & uncomfortable by others in the last generation of scholars.
Which resulted in unintended, deleterious consequences.
For example.
A joke about papers being rejected, caused an editor to post he had rejected my paper (thereby killing the paper, it still has no home).
That joke & comment was cited on a search committee as a reason that I should not be appointed to a position (thereby limiting my opportunities).
Only later, did the editor privately acknowledge his post included false statements, he flat out lied: however, he never publicly apologized (thereby never undoing the damage done to my reputation).
That experience helped me recognize it was time to separate my personal & professional feeds.
Over time, platforms once defined as personal spaces (e..g, FB, Instagram, & so on) had become hybrid spaces or even professional spaces for many academics.
What did that mean?
What had started as opening my life up as an illustration of academic life, became a professional liability.
So what to do?
First, separate your feeds.
Keep a private, personal feed for people close to you.
Keep a more public feed for people more distant.
My new FB account has narrow audience.
Second, clean up your old posts.
The simplest means is to shutter accounts.
If old posts come back to haunt you, then you have a malicious actor on your hands.
Third, you need a presence, esp. if you are early career.
Research in progress shows that the complete absence of a presence can cause suspicion.
So even a minimal feed is fine.
Fourth, think once, twice, thrice before posting negative content.
People remember negative posts, even if they are jokes.
Fifth, stay on top of your accounts.
People assume your posts reflect the current you.
Given the world is changing quickly, you don't want an old opinion to hurt you in the present.
I hope my hard learned lesson helps others.
Clearly, I enjoy posting. I have yet to give that up. I'm just more purposeful now!
Best of of luck!
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