Getting a room in a flatshare has never been as straightforward as the utopian laddish fantasies of the Carlsberg adverts. No one can seriously expect Scarlett Johansson undressing herself in the living room and perfectly clean dishes on a Monday night. However, it does seem a lot more complicated than in previous decades. A classified advert in the local paper once provided all the basic details and your moving in date was effectively year zero. A fresh slate with bright new people. And while it’s hardly a revolutionary tactic in 2012, many people are now tempted to punch their new flatmate’s name into a search engine before they move in. Social control has always been aided and abetted by new forms of technology and with trawls of personal data going back to the early 1990s, your new flatmate’s life story is just waiting to be read.
In the pre-industrial era, the English and Scottish church-states controlled the sex lives, religious practices and all forms of everyday behaviour through the stoking of village gossip. Anyone working in a hostile office will argue nothing much has changed. But minding people’s business has always been a trait of small villages and they have traditionally ensured that no wrong undoing went untold. Privacy is a modern luxury from a historical perspective and only became available after the capitalist toils of the Industrial Revolution.
While the majority of urban Britons remain fervently individualist in their approach to life, technology has now ensured that the world has become a village again. Google stalking is a relatively new means of social control and at the touch of a button our collective lips have become narrowed – sharpened from making judgements. New flatmates trawling Google for information on their future roomies is one thing but when work colleagues or future partners begin to feel the urge it becomes far more sinister. With your personal history lingering on the cliff edge of an internet search engine, there is no limit to how Google (if used effectively) will harvest its victims.
Only recently a human resources executive, John Flexman, 34, was sacked by his employer over his profile on the business networking site LinkedIn. His crime was ticking the “career opportunities” box. Having your boss stalk you on LinkedIn is bad enough but to be sacked for contemplating a future career is a grim indication of how the tide is turning. George Orwell was correct in that sense but what he didn’t predict is that everyone would willingly sign themselves up for it.
Social control inevitably leads to some form of censorship and has led to fake email accounts being used when applying for flats or even jobs, as this partly ensures you can’t be stalked back. Being yourself has its consequences. So regardless of whether you are interesting, quirky, weird or absolutely brilliant, there are millions who may think differently when they type your email address into a search engine. Fresh starts have become things of the past and moderating your online behaviour has now become the norm.Village life has gone digital folks and in the post-internet age there are no longer any hiding places from wagging tongues.
