Difference between revisions of "Jack Hessinger"
| Line 2: | Line 2: | ||
Googling myself is something that I have done occasionally over my time in college and high school. I have noticed that as the years have gone on my online presence has grown rapidly. It used to be that when I googled my name in the beginning of high school a lot of older men named John Hessinger or Jack Hessinger would pop up at the top of the search results. However, as I have increased my online presence through school and professional work, athletic and academic accomplishments, and social media use, I have been steadily moving up the google search results. One constant throughout this process though, was gaps in my online profile compared to my true self. | Googling myself is something that I have done occasionally over my time in college and high school. I have noticed that as the years have gone on my online presence has grown rapidly. It used to be that when I googled my name in the beginning of high school a lot of older men named John Hessinger or Jack Hessinger would pop up at the top of the search results. However, as I have increased my online presence through school and professional work, athletic and academic accomplishments, and social media use, I have been steadily moving up the google search results. One constant throughout this process though, was gaps in my online profile compared to my true self. | ||
=Google Results= | =Google Results= | ||
| − | [[File: | + | [[File:GoogleImagesJackHessinger.png|thumb|Google Image Results for the search: Jack Hessinger]] |
After googling myself what I expected to show up is what showed up. A smattering of high school tennis articles and results, social media accounts, and professional pages liked LinkedIn. My blogs for this class on Medium even showed up but not till further along in the results. After googling my name along with other key words, like tennis, Michigan, or Impact Investing Group (a club I am involved in), much more detailed results showed up. I was able to then get detailed results showing things like brackets from tournaments I was in, biography pages, and different tweets I posted about University of Michigan football. The most curious part about my online profile is the social media presence because I did not join social media until I got to college. It was not something I was interested in in high school and then I downloaded some sites in college to meet new people and keep up with some friends from high school. | After googling myself what I expected to show up is what showed up. A smattering of high school tennis articles and results, social media accounts, and professional pages liked LinkedIn. My blogs for this class on Medium even showed up but not till further along in the results. After googling my name along with other key words, like tennis, Michigan, or Impact Investing Group (a club I am involved in), much more detailed results showed up. I was able to then get detailed results showing things like brackets from tournaments I was in, biography pages, and different tweets I posted about University of Michigan football. The most curious part about my online profile is the social media presence because I did not join social media until I got to college. It was not something I was interested in in high school and then I downloaded some sites in college to meet new people and keep up with some friends from high school. | ||
==Social Media== | ==Social Media== | ||
Revision as of 13:36, 19 February 2021
Googling myself is something that I have done occasionally over my time in college and high school. I have noticed that as the years have gone on my online presence has grown rapidly. It used to be that when I googled my name in the beginning of high school a lot of older men named John Hessinger or Jack Hessinger would pop up at the top of the search results. However, as I have increased my online presence through school and professional work, athletic and academic accomplishments, and social media use, I have been steadily moving up the google search results. One constant throughout this process though, was gaps in my online profile compared to my true self.
Contents
Google Results
After googling myself what I expected to show up is what showed up. A smattering of high school tennis articles and results, social media accounts, and professional pages liked LinkedIn. My blogs for this class on Medium even showed up but not till further along in the results. After googling my name along with other key words, like tennis, Michigan, or Impact Investing Group (a club I am involved in), much more detailed results showed up. I was able to then get detailed results showing things like brackets from tournaments I was in, biography pages, and different tweets I posted about University of Michigan football. The most curious part about my online profile is the social media presence because I did not join social media until I got to college. It was not something I was interested in in high school and then I downloaded some sites in college to meet new people and keep up with some friends from high school.
Social Media
The only social media I use consistently is Twitter, and I typically use it browse others’ tweets and not tweet myself. So, my social media presence isn’t too strong and doesn’t lead to strong search results. The number one social media account that shows up is actually an account that my friend made pretending to be me. Most people’s online profiles are very long because of their extensive social media presence. This made my search a little more difficult because I don’t have much to be searched on the social media side, and what does show up is basically just tweets and retweets about my favorite sports teams. Because I barely use social media, someone who was searching through my social media would basically only learn who my favorite sports were and not much else. They would even be confused because of the several fake accounts out there.</p>One site, Facebook, which I have an account on, is especially bare. My Facebook is one of the top Google search results for my name, however after clicking on it you will find nothing. Facebook is one of the most popular social media sites and has been around for longer than some other popular sites. However, I didn’t download it until freshman year of college and only use it for Facebook Marketplace. This is a popular spot to look for people’s interests, opinions, or even personalities because most people have an extensive history in there dating back to their early teen years.
Professional Sites
The largest part of my profile is pages on professional websites like LinkedIn or Way Up. These contain my resume and other professional milestones, so people looking for me are likely to learn about my professional and academic background. Sites like this are tailored to look good for potential employers though, so while it does provide some background info on me, this info is very pointed and deliberately picked to make myself look good.
What the Internet Got Right
The internet was able to point out my top interest, which is sports. Much of my day is involved around watching or playing sports, and this was captured as almost my entire profile focused on it. Anything on social media that I posted was sports related and any outside sources cited my past high school tennis “career”.In this sense, someone looking for information on me would easily be able to spot what is most important to me. As I will discuss later, there is definitely more to my personality and interests, but the internet was able to capture the key aspects of me.
Based on some of my posts on social media or through the blogs I wrote on medium, people may be able to gather some of my opinions or personality traits. For example, most of my posts on social media are negative towards teams of mine that aren’t performing well. This can show some personality traits such as passionate or short-tempered. One could also infer my competitiveness from my athletic background. They would also know where I stand on some tech ethics issues from my blog posts.
Finally, my professional experiences that come through on sites like LinkedIn show my career interest and what skills I am proficient in. Based on my work experience and academic workload, people researching me would know I am analytical person with strong problem-solving skills. My experiences in supply chain and consulting combined with my economics and applied stats studies show that I am a numbers person who likes to use data to solve problems.
What the Internet Missed
Outside of a few fake social media profiles, the internet didn’t get too much wrong. The bigger question is what the internet missed. As I have said previously, I do not use social media much to share my opinion or post about my interests or personality traits. While someone looking for me online will receive mostly correct info without much difficulty, they will be missing out on a lot of other angles of myself.The biggest thing missing from my online profile is my personality. While this is probably true for most people, it is even more true for myself because I don’t put my words out there often. While some traits can be inferred, most of what is on the internet is either facts about me or stuff that was written about me which doesn’t show my character. For example, there may be some tennis scores out there that show that I am interested in tennis, however that doesn’t tell a story about what I am as a competitor or a teammate. It doesn’t show my leadership amongst my teammates and ability to build them up or the good character and good sportsmanship I show on the court. Likewise, my professional profiles capture my experiences but don’t share much about my interests outside of the classroom or the office.
This leads to another thing that is missing from online profile: auxiliary interests. By looking at my social media you gather that I am a huge sports fan, specifically what teams I am a fan off, and my love for tennis, but you wouldn’t know much outside of that. This is primarily my fault as I don’t share the other stuff online. A person meeting me in person however, would learn a lot about my other interests. Other interests that aren’t online include nature, video games, craft beers, and sustainability. Two of my favorite things to do are ski and hike but these aren’t featured in Google searches.
Overall, the internet’s biggest fault is that much of what is out there about individuals is stuff that they put out themselves. And for people like me who don’t share much, there is obviously a gap between the online identity presented and the personal identity. This is partially on the user for not sharing more about themselves, however it is important to look past what is just on the internet when learning about someone.
Conclusion
Overall, this experience was very useful. To really dive into the details of what kind of presence I have on the internet really shows what people will find if they are researching me, both professionally or personally. I know how I am being presented online now and can adjust to show more sides of myself and limit talking about stuff that isn’t as closely tied to my true identity.The other interesting aspect I noticed is that since I didn’t have much of a social media presence before college, almost all of my profile reflect myself from recent years. I have changed a lot personally since starting college and almost none of this is reflected in my online profile because the only person that is showcased is my “college self”. No one who only knows me online will understand the growth I have made or how some of my views may have changed over the years.
Moving forward I will be much more aware of what other people can see about myself. I was able to find things about myself that I had forgotten about. This shows that anything you do online truly last forever. I will be much more conscious about the person I am putting out to the world, both the good and the bad. Making sure to highlight different aspects about myself along with limiting my interaction with topics that I have talked about way too much. The size of the gap between myself offline and online was certainly larger than I expected.
