The Power of the Internets

You can never understand the power of the internet until you post something you do not necessarily want the world to see. I frequently post my many blog posts to a number of social bookmarking and community oriented sites, but never have I experienced a response as great as what I will refer to as “The Panera Plan 2008″ (the idea was hatched while spending an afternoon I should have spent working in Panera Bread). Acting in a childish and vengeful manner, a few months ago, I ingeniously decided, that instead of confronting a good friend about some material he had posted on a website, that I would be spiteful and post an image of the text on a popular website where people have the ability to up and down vote submissions. At first it was getting a vote here, a vote there, a few comments, and I just thought it would end at that, no biggie – at least I got it off my chest, right?! So I did what any 20-something in the mood for 25 cent wings would do, I headed out for dinner with some friends.

And so it began, while I ferociously chowed down on hot wings I would regret eating later, the thread was already out of control. Continuously being up voted, it was only a matter of time until someone had the idea to find the original website. It took about an hour before someone posted the actual link to their website, despite the fact that I had carefully taken the time to blur out names, dates or any other particularly identifying information. You would think someone as skilled in search engine optimization as myself would take a minute to realize how easy it would be for someone to find the actual site when they had access to a majority of the text found on the page, but as you can tell, I was not in a proper state of mind that day.

Once the website was discovered I knew it was all over. I did my best to execute some sort of damage control, deleting my name from the original post (I did NOT want him to find out it was me via this route), and trying to figure out any way to shut down their site – denial of service attack, anyone? I told Butterfinger what I had done, and instead of disowning me, he simply told me that I knew what I had to do. I had to make it right, I had to call and confess, and hope that he would understand and could forgive my momentary lapse in judgment. While I laid in bed, thrashing around, trying to make sense of what I had done, an anonymous email was sent off to my friend, saying that he had come across this thread and wanted to warn my friend about the things being said.

The morning. “The Panera Plan 2008″ had definitely backfired, and now I had to attempt to explain to one of my best friends why I chose to expose their website to the world, instead of simply voicing my concern about some miscommunicated text. Looking back on it now, I feel like that conversation was more about actions than words. Not much was said one way or the other, but I had acted to fix my lapse in judgment, while being able to tell him how I really felt about what I had read. It was fine. My worries about ruining a friendship cultivated after a decade of experiences were laid to rest, I had made it right. He understood, and we moved on.

I learned a lot from this experience, and I am grateful it happened. We all make mistakes, it’s the only way we grow, but it is important to not just treat our mistakes as momentary blips in our history, and instead to examine the ways in which we can change our reality as a result of working to right ourselves in the wake of a mistake. I need to learn to let things go.  I need to be better at accepting the fact that while my opinions my differ from someone else’s, that their point of view still deserves the same amount of respect. I have come out of this with a comprehension of the way negative thoughts have the ability to manifest themselves in ways that can be very hurtful to people you do not wish any harm upon. And finally, I now know how to harness the powers of the internets for evil, and I am confident I can do the same with the powers of good.