Today's cautionary tale about Googling your date got me thinking. My last blind date (before which I did no investigation) was seriously a nightmare.
As Tom and that i sat down for any glass of wine, he launched right in: \”I am under investigation by the Federal Government.\” I smiled and laughed. \”I'm serious,\” he explained with a strangely vacant smile. \”What for?\” I asked shifting within my seat and starting to sweat a bit. \”They are accusing me of insider trading, but I'm innocent.\” \”Great!\” I said relieved. \”Unless I recieve indicted,\” he said, \”then I would visit jail.\” I gulped my wine down, asked for the check, and sprinted in the rain as fast as I possibly could to the nearest subway station.
So now my pal wants to set me up on a blind date and I want to make extra sure that I have all the dirt about this dude before proceeding. No more am i going to suffer a repeat from the Tom scenario. So, following Wendy's sage advice, I Googled this guy's email address and name.
Phew … he came up clean. Good job in a creative industry, went to exactly the same college as me, good-looking so far as Google images are concerned, and, most importantly, he doesn't appear to be wanted or have a diaper fetish. Great! Now, because I'm paranoid – you are able to understand why-I decided to take my investigation one stage further and extremely try to find out his true colors. What else could I do, you may well ask? Check out his internet persona. Yes. Personas is a website that's a companion for an exhibit displayed in the MIT Museum. So this is what happens: You enter a name and Personas searches the net for information and tries to characterize that individual by looking into making a colorful ribbon from pre-determined categories. It's a lot like a colorful internet criminal record check. OMG! So cool. Take a look at my date's Persona. Looks best to me. I'm glad to determine that we have the background music, movies, and books in common (I did my own Persona too obviously). I'm thinking I'll say yes to the set-up.