The grid

Ron's thoughts on the grid

            Last week at our Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) meeting, the speaker mentioned how one of her co-workers is the office creep. When anyone walks in the door she immediately knows everything about his or her life via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc. She, like so many others, uses the grid to learn more about potential clients and employees. If she can’t find anything about you on the Internet, she becomes suspicious.

            This seems completely rational. In such a technologically dependent world, I am always surprised if I Google someone and don’t turn up much information. It reminded me of a recent episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.
            Ron Swanson (an anti-government, government employee) receives a piece of junk mail and doesn’t understand how this company got his address. His co-workers explain to him it’s because he is on the grid. Ron spends the rest of the episode completely removing himself from the gird. He refuses to have any form of social media, cuts up all of his credit cards and removes all public record of his existence. Meanwhile his co-workers are making Vines, posting tweets, Instagrams and Facebook photos of the entire day because they love the grid.

            My generation is constantly interacting on the grid. There are more social media websites than I can count and we are using them.  It seems sometimes we miss out on living in the moment because we are too busy posting it online. That’s exactly what Ron’s co-workers were doing throughout the day. They were “helping Ron” get off the grid, but in actuality they just spent their time tweeting about it.  There needs to be a healthy balance between building your personal brand and being overly engaged online.

What do you think? Are we too engaged online?
What does being “on the grid” mean about how advertisers try to market to us?
What are the other implications of being “on the grid” in a world where a simple Google search can reveal the smallest detail of your interactions online?

Ron tries to delete photos of himself on a tablet and creates this Vine instead

**Check out Park's and Recreation's Twitter and Pinterest accounts. They're by far one of the best television shows engaging with their fans online.