Megan McArdle discusses the at-that-time-unexpected permanence of the blogosphere, specifically what one wrote then may still be used against you now:
I suspect that I shall spend the rest of my life being pursued by lefty bloggers who think that linking this six year old post is a substitute for argument. Nonetheless, it occurs to me that while I have repeatedly dealt with it in various places, I probably haven't here. So here's the deal. I'm going to talk about it now, because it was, frankly, a pretty stupid thing to write, and mea culpas are good for the soul. Then I'm never going to talk about it again. I have yet to see anyone deploy it against me who could even vaguely be accused of acting in good faith. On the other hand, there are readers in good faith who are surprised by it, and I think I owe them an explanation.
[. . .]
Why did I write it? In part, because blogging was a new medium for the warbloggers, and many of us had an unfortunate tendency to say the kind of ridiculous things that one says without meaning them at bars in 3 am, except in print where everyone can enjoy them forever. If you've ever declared that people who jump queues should be shot, you have some sense of what I mean.
And I was young, and lots of things seem inappropriately funny when you're young — in your mid-twenties, empathy is often largely theoretical. This is perhaps the only good thing about aging.
This is indeed the danger of our always-searchable blogging past: it can, and will, come back to haunt you. And it's not just bloggers . . . anyone with an ancient Usenet account can find their early maunderings preserved online. Lots of private email messages are out there, too, although (thank goodness) not everything is yet. Expect SMS and chat logs to show up soon. Data may or may not want to be free, but it'll be a rare bit that doesn't show up on the net sooner or later.
Apologies to Omar Khayyám fans for the butchery of the poem in the headline.
Posted by Nicholas at July 2, 2008 12:08 PM
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