Carlos Cardenas
STILL WORK IN PROGRESS
Contents
Introductions and Expectations
Throughout most of my life, I thought that I was a pretty open book, especially in regards to my online presence. Part of this was my becoming tech savvy at a younger age than I believe most of my peers did, in addition to my naive perceptions on just how long information would stay on the web and how accessible that information is. As I got older and more conscious about the messages my online presence could send, I acted more judiciously. Granted, that doesn’t mean you can’t go back and find some old content I’ve made. The Facebook account I still have and use is the one I made when I was 10. Thus, going into the search for my online identity I was expecting to be greeted by lots of old stuff. I don’t have any bad skeletons in the closet, but maybe I would be confronted by the occasional cringeworthy thing I did or said. So when I began by Googling just “Carlos Cardenas”, I was a little bummed that nothing remotely about me showed up, for pages at a time. I never really thought that I had that common of a name - at least in the US. I guess I was wrong.
Disappointing Realities, With a Silver Lining
“Could this Carlos Cardenas be me?” I would think to myself as I clicked on the 50th result for my name, and it wasn’t me. None of them were me. I was more than a little surprised. Was I not as much of an open book as I thought? Was I more conscientious about how much personal information about myself I gave away than I thought I was when I was younger? Looking back, I thought I was pretty stupid about how I interacted online in my ignorant youth. Maybe not so much?
Carlos Cardenas's Social Media Presence
I tried to get more specific now based on the platform. “Carlos Cardenas Facebook.” Nothing. “Carlos Cardenas Instagram”. Nada. “Carlos Cardenas Twitter”. “Carlos Cardenas Youtube.” You get the picture. My online presence seemed like a vast and empty desert. To say I was incredibly surprised by how dry my queries came up would be an understatement. I could not fathom the fact that despite me being so active with technology and the internet that I literally had almost nothing to show from my results for the first 18 years of my life. This is especially surprising to me considering that I’ve had some online from an age where I was far more extroverted and opinionated than I am now. Afterwards though, I thought to myself - Shouldn’t this be a good thing? Shouldn’t I be glad that it seems as if young Carlos didn’t exist? After pondering this for a while, I came to a conclusion. “Carlos Cardenas” would certainly be too broad, even with social media keywords. I think this is the case because my more relaxed and engaged online persona isn’t really tied to my name, so in order to find it, you have to know exactly what you’re looking for. I do truly feel like I have one version of me that has an online presence. It is clean-cut and pampered, and something that I will present to family and professional interests. This is where I feel platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn come into play, which I found easier to find myself than other platforms. There does exist another side of me that is presented elsewhere and is less likely to be identifiable. This is my more casual, relaxed, meme-lord side. This is where I found traces of my Reddit and my now-defunct Twitter.
Data Broker: Waste of Money
But before I tried to “game the system” by tweaking my queries, I wanted to see how well a paid data broker service would fare by just having my name, my age, and my hometown. Trying to see if I could do an even deeper dive into what information about me is out on the internet, I turned to a data broker service called InstantCheckmate. Feeling both excited and slightly nervous to see what information could be found by a paid service (this cost me a whole $15), I generated a report that I know was meant to be about me (it was listed for Carlos Cardenas, age 20, from Troy, Michigan). The report that I received was rather disappointing, as the information it gave about me was quite scant. It generated more information about my father than it did for me.
Some context regarding that: I was named after the man who remains the greatest male role model in my life - my father. So while I have a great namesake, it makes the task of finding information that is specific to me all the more difficult. Quite frankly, when I was Googling my name, nothing really came up for my dad either. This wasn’t surprising though since he only really uses Facebook. For me, InstantCheckmate knew that my full name was Carlos Alberto Cardenas, with Carlos Cardenas Jr. being one of my known aliases. It correctly knew that I was born on June 1st, 2000. It knew my permanent address, and the sale price and its current valuation of the house. However, it was listed under the assets section, which means it is referring to the house under the context of being under my dad’s ownership. It matches the information that my parents have told me about the house, so it does seem authentic. Beyond that, the InstantCheckmate report gave me nothing noteworthy. It said I owned a Jeep Liberty… except that's a car that my dad used to own, and hasn’t for nearly 10 years. The jobs it says I have are jobs that neither I nor my father have ever worked. The social media information that InstantCheckmate found was a Facebook page that did not belong to me or my dad. My mom’s name popped as a relative, but beyond that, InstantCheckmate was continuing the pattern of being pretty dry. Once again, I was conflicted and surprised by this.
Nothing Personal. Just Business
However, when I googled “Carlos Cardenas Michigan”, my LinkedIn page was actually the first result. Now we’re talking. My LinkedIn page has a picture of me from high school homecoming my senior year. It lists that I am a University of Michigan student studying computer science, some extracurriculars, and where I went to high school. The purpose my LinkedIn serves is to show my best professional side and to impress potential employers. All of the information is stuff that is authentic about me, but with some intentional omissions of things like my university transcript. Not that I’m ashamed of my transcript, but I made some missteps freshman year and had mediocre results in a couple of classes that I don’t think are representative of my true innate aptitude.
Nowadays, I’m not really active on any social media. Even though I deleted my Twitter last year, some trace of it still remains. When I googled my old Twitter handle (which I don’t want to share because I still use it and I like to keep such things private - sorry), you can find my old Twitter bio cached in the results Granted, when you actually try to access the page, it informs you it doesn’t exist.
The Needle in the Haystack
As it turns out, the identity I assumed under this handle actually turned out to be the most powerful link between me and my online presences. If someone was able to discern that I used this handle, they could find a lot. Doing Google Image search with this handle returned what I was looking for this whole time. For instance, a photo of me dabbing from my sophomore year of high school, still sitting on an old friend’s Twitter account.
Another thing you could find from this is that I am active in anti-cilantro subreddits, because cilantro is disgusting. You’d also find that I’ve expressed interest in stuff like Pokemon, Attack on Titan, and Mass Effect, all on Reddit. What surprised me most about Googling myself with this handle is that it led to my very old and very defunct Tumblr account. Why did this surprise me? It’s because my Tumblr handle was different from the Twitter and Reddit handle I used. So how is it that Google knew to present this Tumblr account when the old handle was queried, despite being no connection between them? That is what spooked me the most during this search, and it makes me wonder about any invisible connections that Google remembers that I simply don’t or can’t find. So in this journey I had in searching both the depth and breadth of my online presence throughout my life, I came across some surprises. Despite me fully expecting to be confronted with a compendium of everything I ever did and said online in my youth, this wasn’t really the case.
