OCTOBER 24, 2008

Online Research - Friend or Foe?

I am not a particularly nosy person. I like to think of myself as well-informed and proactive. Okay… who am I kidding? It’s so easy to be nosy nowadays! (And as David referenced in his post a few months ago, I’m not the only one.)

Google serves as a wonderful little sidekick that can give me juicy tidbits about people, places, and things whenever I want them. Thanks to Yelp, I can research the service at the restaurant I’m thinking of going to and read reviews from real patrons. Sites like Rate My Professor prepare me for what to expect from instructors, as well evaluate my books before I buy them for a class. Rate My Cop evaluates police officers based on personal accounts of interactions by people online. (As you might imagine, some people have not-so-nice things to say about the officer that just wrote them a ticket hours earlier.) A friend of mine even showed me how to look up county information to find out if people have traffic tickets or arrests. All you need is a name and a county to search in.

When I recently moved to a new house, Rotten Neighbors took the mystery out of the situation - it gave me the chance to screen my neighbors before even meeting them. And, I admit that after I finished checking out my own neighborhood, I had fun plugging in the addresses of my family and friends.

But, does this knowing all information, especially information about the people around us, make us safer? Happier? Probably not. In many cases, it just give us another thing to worry about. And let’s face it, for most of us, our list of worries is already pretty long as it is. Do we really need to think about that crazy write-up that someone posted online about our neighbor that may or may not be true?

When all is said and done, we should use these tools when necessary, but not go overboard. I am learning to take the information and reviews I read online with a grain of salt and focus more on the number and quantity of bad reviews more than the specific details of one person’s account. This keeps me from stewing over something that may or may not be biased, and unnecessarily ruining my perception of a restaurant, neighbor, cop, or person unfairly. Then both technology and my conscience will be on my side.