It seems to come in waves: new members joining AN and using their own names as user names and their photos as avatars. Although no one truly believes that the internet is anonymous anymore, there are some very good reasons not to be totally obvious, either. AN is a very good place to come to ask questions -- especially questions you don't want to run by the crusty old bats on your unit, or to vent about your professors or bosses, or fellow students or colleagues, your patients or your family. Being instantly recognizable is not a good thing.
It seems that every year, there's a new bunch of AN members who use their own photo as an avatar. It's a dangerous practice. The internet isn't really as anonymous as we all like to think it is, but if you're using your own picture as an avatar, you might as well use your own name as well. (And no, Ruby Vee is not my real, live legal name.)
AN is a great place to come to have questions answered -- especially stupid questions that you don't want to run by the crusty old bats who work on your unit. It's a great place to come to vent ABOUT those crusty old bats, those clueless newbies or the manager from Hades. If I come here to vent about that witch of a patient's family member who drank from the sterile saline bottle, lied about it, and then blamed the nursing staff for the horrible infection her husband got and it turns out that she reads this board because she wants to be a nurse some day, I'd be mighty glad my picture isn't up there for everyone to see. If I mention that I've seen a patient with a really rare disease, and claim it was years ago in another state and the patient was the opposite gender -- all of my colleagues would know I was REALLY talking about that patient we have on the unit right now. And if I, inadvertently or otherwise, said something controversial, objectionable or just plain disagreeable, that post would be printed out and shoved under the door of the boss's office one night. At least I'd have plausible deniability since I'm *NOT* using my own name or my own face.
I know a lot of people think they'll NEVER say anything that someone else finds ignorant, abrasive, untrue or otherwise objectionable, and therefore they're safe using their picture as an avatar. I'm here to tell you, though, that you never know what someone else may find offensive. You never know what's going to rile someone up to the point of cyber-stalking, sharing your posts with your boss (or even the one about how your husband never forgets to walk the dog when he's the first person coming home after work, and never REMEMBERS to walk the dog when you're going to be the one to walk into the house first and find the mess . . . hate to find that one printed out on our kitchen table!). You just never know. And you cannot always stop yourself -- at least I can't -- when someone posts something incredibly ignorant -- from telling them how ignorant it is.
A colleague of mine posted on allnurses about what bullies and witches all of the preceptors in our unit are, how everyone she worked with was persecuting her and how she was only going to be on the job for the minimum time possible to get into CRNA school anyway. The avatar she used wasn't her picture, but was an avatar she used for other forums and some of her "friends" at work put two and two together . . . she found herself having a chat with our manager about her extreme unhappiness with her job. I'm told it didn't go well for her. An orientee we were having trouble with posted a whole lot of impassioned venting about her horrible preceptors, her terrible boss and how sick she was of her job. She stayed signed in to AN on the nurse's station computer when she went home in the morning. The Assistant Nurse Manager was not amused when she hopped on the computer and found the vent thread . . . nor was the DON amused when she was given the print-out. Had the orientee not used her own name and a photo of her dog/car/bicycle/boyfriend/whatever that she was very proud of an had shown to all and sundry, we would not have been able to prove who posted the vitriol.
Another colleague made a long, impassioned post about how nurses eat their young, and she knows that because she's been eaten. That post was nearly ten years ago, and she looks back on it now and cringes at how ignorant she was then. Unfortunately, at some point in the interim, she either used her picture as an avatar or posted too much information because now some of her co-workers know who she is on allnurses, and were teasing her about that post the other day. On the other hand, her orientees can never claim she's forgotten what it was like to be a brand new nurse. The evidence is out there!
Be safe, guys. Take a nice picture of a creative bumper sticker or T shirt, a flower, a mountain or your old cat (not the one all of your colleagues know because it's on your locker) and use that as an avatar instead!
But that does not mean you have to participate in it. Yes AN is a form or social media but a bit more anonymous than others out there (so long as you don't have your personal picture and name here).[/quote']
Ding ding ding! Exactly!
I don't know why anyone should feel like they have to participate.
All nurses is a lot more anonymous but when one chooses to use their first and last name as their username and a picture of his/herself as their avatar, then that sense of privacy is out the window.
Out of sheer curiosity I googled my name and the first thing that popped up was my LinkedIn profile. This is ok with me. The next 20 items were listings for people with the same name but not me. This is how everyone should be. Anonymity is a valuable thing these days.
Google Image Search allows you to upload or copy/paste a photo from any site (that doesn't block such actions), then Google scours the 'net to identify the origin of that photo. It's not perfact yet, but it's scary enough as it is. You can be sure if you post your pic on Facebook, (even worse- if you label your pic with your NAME), then your face and your name will forever be searchable using either your name or your photo. Ever wonder why a transparent box opens on Fecbook photos as you curse over them? They want you to provide a name of the face in those photos- then it'll never be undone. If you think someone in here uses their own photo as an avatar, or just want to try some fun with GIS, here's what to do:
Right click the avatar, or any other photo. A few sites (like dating sites) have disabled this function, however.
Save it to your desktop.
Pull up GIS.
Paste, or upload the avatar, or photo into the seach box. Click search.
If that avatar or other photo is anywhere online, or maybe ever HAS been online, you might get a match. And a Facebook name?
Something else I noticed: pre-nursing student new members oftentimes post to the threads of the school/s they have applied to:
"I'm so nervous . . ."
"Anxiously awaiting hearing whether I got in to X school"
"I got in"
"Me too"
et cetera. The threads stick (they're there, accessible forever) way beyond the point of application. Anyone who takes a look around can then figure out who these individuals are (even if they did not post their own picture or use their own name, which they sometimes do) based on which school's thread they had conversations, said they got in to, and "are definitely going to!"
I'll admit: I'm a pre-nursing student who got into choice #1 school . . . but I had a moment of clarity when signing up for my account. I had been reading articles here for a couple years while taking prerequisites and had noticed those who were accidentally self-identifying from "go" and decided not to post anything to that school's thread.
Believe me, it was nice to see that I wasn't alone anxiously awaiting news from the same program. It was even nice to see posts from a member of the school who keeps watch over the AN thread and helps answer questions. I doubt, however, that many of the application-stage individuals realized that they had self-disclosed exactly who they are from their very first post to AN.
I've said it before... AN provides the luxury of staying anonymous. Facebook does not. When I had one, it required me to use my actual name and wanted me to fill out all of my details (school, work place, even address). The address part was the final straw. Why should Facebook have access to that?
So I prefer AN methods. And I much appreciate that there are users like TheCommuter and Ruby Vee who reminds others to protect themselves.
Something else I noticed: pre-nursing student new members oftentimes post to the threads of the school/s they have applied.
These threads make me cringe. My state forum is unfortunately filled with them too, making so many users identifiable.
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Irish_Mist, BSN, RN
489 Posts