With its new Facebook application Wisk-It, the laundry detergent company Wisk can now help students clean up their dirty images.
The application goes through photos that a user has been tagged in and removes the ones they no longer want their name attached to.
In addition, it sends the owner of the photo a request for it to be taken down. The removal request comes in the form of three pre-written messages along with the option for users to create their own comments.
But everything this application offers can be done easily without opening up your Facebook information to the detergent company, so why bother?
All you need to do is go through your photos, remove the tags yourself and send a message to the person who posted them, asking them to take the pictures down.
If you feel that the person will not remove the photo no matter how nicely you ask, switch your photo setting to private, then create an album with the images of you that you want the public to have access to.
Facebook pages that paint users in a negative light are becoming more problematic, as the original users who joined Facebook when they were college students are now entering the workplace. To make’ matters worse, Facebook is now open to the public, so your potential boss can now see that photo of you wearing your underwear on your head while drinking beer out of a baby bottle.
Though everyone has had a photo taken of them in a situation similar to this, when taken out of context it just looks bad. There is simply no avoiding it.
These days, if you do something stupid in public, someone is going to take a photo. If you are someone who feels the need to make a photo journal of your life, please stop. You are making everyone who uses Facebook or any other social networking Web site, including yourself, look bad.
If you take a photo of your friends while they are drunk, future employers can see that you were at the party too – because you took the photo. This is just as bad as being the idiot who thought that his toga wasn’t see-through, because you played a part in someone’s stupidity.
So please stop taking these types of photos, because people are not about to stop doing stupid things.
Travis Hensley is a communication and philosophy senior and may be reached at [email protected]
