6. Big Brother is Watching

Interesting article at CNN, check it out...

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Mark Jen landed a dream job with Google Inc. in January. He was fired less than a month later.

His infraction? He ran a Web log, where he freely gabbed about his impressions of life at the Mountain View, Calif.-based Internet search giant.

Web logs, or blogs, the online personal diaries where big names and no names expound on everything from pets to presidents, are going mainstream. While still a relatively small piece of total online activity, blogging has caught on with affluent young adults. As Forrester Research analysts recently noted, blogging will become increasingly common as these consumers age.

For companies, the growing popularity of blogs is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, corporate managers recognize the power of word-of-mouth as a sales tool. On the other hand, they're acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the rapid and widespread dissemination of company information.

You can read it in it's entirety here.

Ok, two things here. Firstly, if you wanna bitch and gripe about your bosses or work, by all means do so. But for the love of God, at least do it anomynously! Don't moan when you get canned for calling your boss an incompetent moppet. I mean, if you're stupid enough to actually name that asshole boss of yours or the company you work for, while conveniently leaving your actual name or picture on your personal profile, then you probably deserve to join the world of unemployment. Likewise if you post confidential company information. In fact, they should even throw your ass in jail for that.

However, getting sacked for expressing your personal thoughts and opinions about something non-work related, well that's another thing entirely. Does this mean if you post pictures of yourself in Superman tights that you stand the risk of getting fired? What does you harbouring secret fantasies of being Superman have to do with work anyway? Well, besides being mentally unstable and a threat to society, the answer is nothing! Or if you were to say that you wished the commies would come back and overthrow the government and put all those people who leave their handphones on in the cinema in concentration camps (erm, not that I'm thinking it), does that mean they can sack you?

It boggles the mind. But it's quite reassuring to know that somewhere out there, Big Brother is still watching. Maybe one day, and may that day come soon (only because it'll be way too cool), they'll plant little microchips in our brains that'll automatically give us electric shocks whenever we even think a dastardly thought about our bosses/government/partner/spouse/Michael Jackson. Then we can safely say that mankind has evolved to the next level (that's right before machines become self-aware and take over, turning humans into batteries Matrix-like). Until then, I guess we'd just have to be content with losing our jobs for having an opinion. I mean, how dare we?