One could argue that the problem is not that the information about people’s checkered pasts is out there, it’s that people who run across it are giving it undue weight.

So dude has kinky sex preferences. So what? Is that a valid justification for treating him poorly? So Star Wars kid was youthfully exuberant. A decent person, upon recognizing him as an adult, would either say something positive or nothing at all. “Boy, you sure were a dork when you were twelve” is not an appropriate or civil comment, and I hope he learns to respond, with dignity, “What, and you weren’t a dork? At least my dorkitude was briefly famous. What did YOU do when you were twelve?”

The internet may be forever, but which is the more shameful behavior: doing something stupid? Or holding someone’s one-time stupidity against them in perpetuity, never giving them the benefit of the doubt, and never forgiving the unforgotten mistake?

We have all done things we’re not proud of, and we don’t necessarily want to broadcast those things to people that we’re meeting for the first time. On a first date, you don’t say “Let me tell you about all of my bad habits and all the stupid things I’ve done.”

But if somebody else has splashed that stuff on the Internet, then it’s easily accessible via Google, and you don’t even get the chance to explain yourself. One man mentioned in the book is haunted by a short stint in prison he did when he was a teenager, because employers and potential girlfriends weren’t even letting him explain the circumstances before dismissing him. Another guy mentioned had his girlfriend wrote about his kinky sexual preferences on her blog. Another friend tells the story of a fellow student who changed his name as the only way of escaping an allegation of drug dealing. Do you think the Star Wars kid is ever going to live down his youthful exuberance?

Maybe those people don’t deserve a second chance, and are simply reaping the consequences of their actions. But I think we should still hold some degree of control over what information we disclose and when. And the Internet can make it much harder to do that.

The subject also puts me in mind of the populace’s evolving ability to distinguish valuable information and opinions from worthless ones. I remember back in Teh Intarweb Dawn Times getting lots of copies of the Neiman-Marcus Cookie Recipe™. Over time, they tapered off as the people I know who have my email address got a clue. I wonder if maybe many of the problems we see with online reputation are just a marker of transition, and that as the bulk of the world gets a clue, if viral opinions as indelible Digital Scarlet Letters will come to seem as quaint and ridiculous as people believing that the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was fact not fiction…

(I really can’t wait until some Gen-Yer runs for office and says in response to the discovery of some online “scandal”: “Dude, everyone my age posted drunk-and-nekkid pictures to MySpace when they were 20. It’s totally unimportant. Get over it.”)