Digital Urban Legends

New York

This past weekend I went to a family bar mitzvah and like most family events, there was little to do but eat and drink. My mother, after having one mimosa (that’s right, only one) found herself slightly ‘over-served’, which is mom speak for slightly buzzed. She joyously ran to the (empty) dance floor and proceeded to dance some kind of combination between a traditional Romanian folk dance and Kris Kross ‘jump’. Lets just say, it cannot accurately be described. My boyfriend, who is never without his digital camera managed to record this ‘so you think you can dance’ moment and uploaded the footage to youtube so the family could all watch it. We all agreed, including my mother (she has a wonderful sense of humor) that this would go down in the bar mitzvah hall of fame.

But a few days later my mother called me up. “Jessica, I want you to take down that video of me off of the Internet,” she asked in a sullen, nervous voice. I immediately felt badly, thinking that my mom was embarrassed and been hiding it all this time… but I was way off. “Its just that I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m really worried about identity theft.” Huh?

It turned out that for days my mom had been thinking about all of potential disasters that might happen as a result of her Internet debut. What if someone used the video to get her social security number? What if someone saw her dancing and accused her of faking her herniated disk (her very serious back injury). I have to admit I rolled my eyes at my paranoid, baby boomer mother, but of course took the video off of youtube.

But then I got to thinking about my own circle. I too have heard stories about people mistakenly sharing too much online. Didn’t some girl talk about sex and drugs on her facebook page and lost her job because of it? Don’t corporations google people to make sure they are who they say they are? Despite our differences, my mother and I have both heard quite a few urban legends about sharing too much and paying the price.

Implication: Urban legends may not be true, but they still influence the way we act and how we feel. Things don’t have to be real, to be real in their consequences … even in the digital world.