Doocing

People seem to be willing to post almost anything on the internet, about themselves, about their friends, about their enemies, about their employers.  I have been amazed.  I don't know how to get on facebook, but I have seen it when the kids do and have been surprised at what all the youngsters will brag about--sexual escapades, employment hi-jinks, drug use.

I don't doubt these things have been topics among friends and acquaintances into pre-history, but now they are permanent and available to all.  In junior high school, we would quake because what we did was on our "permanent record."  Now it really is.  And if it seems cute enough at age 16, like a little tattoo of a pussy cat, say, at age 40 and beyond it becomes grotesque.  Now that aging tattoo is stretched  across continents and hardened into scarred pieces of old flesh.  It is like having that old shoplifting mug shot etched on your sagging jowls.

I suppose we may finally learn some tolerance with everyone's past being dragged around like a dead prehensile tail, but it is not (to my eyes) a pretty sight.

This is all new to me and requires teaching some new tricks to an old dog.   For a long time I resisted putting a "." in the middle of a sentence.  I've given up, of course, on that now.  I still don't know what various signals mean or how to use them.  LOL :-) :-( :-o, etc.  But I do now know "blog" is short for "web log" and I know the meaning of "doocing."

"Doocing" is:  

dooced adjective /dust/  having lost your job because of something you have put in an Internet weblog

dooce verb [T] (usually passive) /dus/
doocing noun [U/C] /dus/

The word came from a blog by Heather B. Armstrong, still in existence, dooce.com

 Ms. Armstrong coined the term by misspelling the word "doood," a term that must mean something to someone, but not me.  She was working as a blog designer, wrote about her employer and got fired.  She seems to have taken her fame on to bigger and better things based on the references to book signing parties on her blog, but her ultimate advice is as follows:

“I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for 

this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. 

My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the 

internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING 

ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET.” 

Since Armstrong, there have been many notorious cases of people being dooced.  Ellen Simonetti was fired from Delta airlines for some hardly racy photographs of herself in an flight attendant uniform in an airplane.  Mark Jen was fired from Google for posting comparative pay benefits between Google and Microsoft.  Jessica Cutler was a staff assistant from an Ohio Senator who was posting anonymously, but was outed and then fired after she described her ventures into prostitution to augment her meager staff pay.

At this stage there is very little protection for employees of private employers who are not careful and offend their bosses.  The larger issues of defamation and disclosure of trade secrets are also being tested by the law.  I am interested in the legal developments related to blogging and plan to do a few posts along these lines.