Employers look at Facebook and Google you, yadda yadda. It’s an old story. You know it, we do it, DP commenters want the paper to move on.

But if we all know this, why are Penn students so lazy about simple protective steps — and so slow to take advantage of us gullible bosses?

According to one estimate, more than 30,000 Penn students have their profiles open for any alum to browse around. Which we will. Because employers are immoral, awful people. (Unlike undergrads who Facebook freshmen rushing their fraternity, or look up their assigned roommates. But I digress.)

Of course, running scare stories — employers will use the Patriot Act to access Facebook! Your profile will be part of your job application! — is more fun for college newspapers than being frank: plenty of curious employers can’t get to your page unless they try really hard. Many Penn students won’t interview with alums who have Facebook, and a growing number of companies block social networking sites anyway.

But most importantly, there’s a big shift underway: as employees sign up for sites like Facebook and MySpace, embarassing personal details are increasingly accepted (and ignored) in the workplace. Not to mention that seeing revealing Halloween pictures of aging coworkers is a lot scarier than seeing college kids do college things.

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Stanley Fish’s February 3rd NY Times blog, “All You Need Is Hate,” got me thinking. (Note the Beatles mentality of the 21st century.) Fish, a professor of law, discusses what affectionately has become known as Hillary-hating. Hilary-hating is a distinct breed of political bashing. It’s acutely chauvinistic, callous, and aggressive (read: macho).

I kind of get it. I wouldn’t want Hillary as my mother — even if Bill Clinton were included as a package deal. (And moreover, maybe her criticism is due to society’s general dislike of aging women, and she shouldn’t take it personally.)

Still, Hillary haters are not your typical critics. They are borderline delusional and suspiciously fervent. I say suspicious because this type of bashing would not be accepted if it were on the basis of class or race.

Therefore, who are these Hillary haters? How hateful are they? Should I be scared? 

I conducted my sociological research via Facebook. (And that’s legitimate!)

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Syria has blocked facebook, fearing an infiltration of Israelis.

Human rights groups have regularly criticized Syrian authorities for blocking opposition sites …

Now if blocking facebook isn’t a violation of human rights, what is?

I’m all for violating the human rights of perverts, but this is probably the worst idea ever. New Jersey just passed a law banning sex offenders on parole from using networking sites like MySpace.com and Facebook. Give up Facebook? Go cold turkey? If sorority girls can’t do it, then pederasts won’t be able to either. Networking sites are like their crack cocaine.

And so like crack, Facebook needs to be something sex offenders are weaned off of. Here’s an idea: just pass a bill making all convicted sex criminals register that information with networking sites. Their public profile should be marked with a little star or something, meaning that they’ve committed a sex crime. People have a right to know; I think that’s like the law or something.

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CNN and YouTube hosted a debate for the Democratic presidential candidates in July (the Republicans get their turn tomorrow). Then MySpace and MTV collaborated for presidential dialogues at universities. Now, yesterday, Facebook announced a joining of forces with ABC News to sponsor upcoming presidential debates.

If you watched the CNN-YouTube and were dismayed by the lack of quality questions chosen, you weren’t alone. That’s because the audience that loiters and fools around with YouTube isn’t that quality either. And then the MySpace-MTV forums featured even more watered down questions that barely grasped the surface of politics. We’re talking about MTV — synonymous with style over substance. So the basket is set low for Facebook to slam dunk.

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I’m not really the Facebook type. My “UPenn Friends” list barely tops 100. My wall doesn’t get much play. I link to my posts, but only because my editors make me.

And when Facebook introduced all those applications, I got kind of overwhelmed and pissed off. One time I got a notification that someone thought I was sexy, but to see who it was I had to install the “Sexy Application.” Forget it, I thought. I can’t deal with that kind of cockteasing.

But just when I was about to disable my account, along came Scrabulous. Created by the brothers Agarwalla (network: India), it’s basically an un-investigated copyright infringement on Scrabble. Scrabulous is pretty popular — it boasts about 500,000 daily users.

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