It's True, I Read It On Wiki.

Reputation is a funny thing.
Often a single event defines who we become in the public eye.
A woman who has lived a life wrapped in normalcy for more than 30 years can become 'the girl who got so drunk she vomited on the lap of the guy she was giving a head job to in the pub' in a heartbeat.
She is forever more 'the vomiting head job girl'.
These days with the permanent documentation of the Internet, an unfortunate event or ill advised slip in dignity is there forever to be revisited again and again and again.
The number of times I have warned my three about cameras and sexual acts makes me sound like a woman obsessed.
I KNOW it worked for Paris Hilton and Kim Kardasiarse, but I simply don't want it to work for my own kids.
Ever.
The thing about the Internet too, while I am on it, is that it can be used to create things that are not actually there.
Take Hymie Hasbeen, for example (see previous blog for details).
He has a Wiki page.
It even lists some of his achievements.
In 2013, a Wiki page seems to attach solidity to the unsolid.
If it's online, it must be true.
I now invite you to look away from this blog and explore the things you never thought were possible, online.
Actual pictures of fairies in the garden, women being actually cut in half and magicked together unharmed, stories of John Travolta's heterosexuality.
It's all there.
Being on the Internet does not make something real.
But a reputation created on the Internet seems to be.
Having a public relations firm write a press release filled with achievements and accolades should not be the bases of a mans standing within the community, and yet it has become that.
If Adolf Hitler were alive today, the spin doctors working to justify his behaviour would have us all believing that the destruction of the Jews and the annihilation of freedom was simply the logical next step in evolution.
The mans reputation would have been seared into positive permanence by the workings of the World Wide Web.
I am not criticising the Internet per say, after all how else would I have a platform to vent, merely I am pointing out that a reputation- so easy to create and destroy- should be based on more than a website.
But of course I am pissing into a very strong wind on this one.
Hymie Hasbeen, the man with an ego so brittle parts of it flake off as he walks down the street, will continue to be revered for as long as the management handling his social media profile receive the cheques.
And even when the cheques dry up- an ironic reflection of their client- the permanence of the Internet will ensure that his reputation remains as it was set.
Counter claims to a mans reputation at the street level tend to have little impact until the roar becomes so deafening that it can no longer be ignored.
Jimmy Savile being a case in point.
The interesting point in all this is that it would only require one incident, one tiny little 'caught on camera' moment to alter the structure of a reputation forever.
Wiki pages can be altered too, by anyone who has half a brain and knows how to use the a computer.
So we now find ourselves in a World where we write our own legend with the flick of a wrist, and can have it destroyed by the click of a button.
No wonder we all are developing such short attention spans.