In a discussion recently with high school students, Obama was asked how one of the students could become President. The answer was as follows

“I want everybody here to be careful about what you post on Facebook (Facebook), because in the YouTube (YouTube) age whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life. That’s number one,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

Do we really need to be that careful about what we post online? Well, in a word, yes. But I don’t think we need to be as careful as a lot of people are saying. We are quickly coming to the point where everyone is going to have some stupid photos on the internet. Even if you don’t put them there, someone else will. And there are new devices designed specifically to record ‘life events’ that are going to capture everything going on around the wearer. So even if you have nothing to do with them but are trying to pick up that nice girl in the bar, it’s going to end up on the internet.

But with the deluge of these sorts of pictures and postings come some form of anonymity. It’s not that people don’t know you’re doing it, but rather people now know that everyone else is doing it too. Now with that being said, it’s still a pretty good idea to not be caught doing certain things, this isn’t some sort of blank check to do whatever you want obviously. In fact, it’s probably a good thing to not even do certain things, let alone get caught doing them.

So in the nearish future, all those ridiculous photos of people will just start to fade into the background. What once seemed scandalous will just be lost in the flood of information. But worry not, there will still be people doing some stupendously stupid stuff for us to laugh at, it just won’t be your picture of drunk karaoke.

PS – In a couple of years, this post may become an example of exactly the sort of thing you shouldn’t post on the internet… oh the irony.

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