努力经营你在互联网上的名声已经毫无意义了。这么做已经太迟了，家丑已经外扬，并在网上肆意传播。任何人都可以随心所欲地谈论某家公司或某个人，而不用担心有什么后果。
很快情况会变得更加糟糕：一家供人们相互点评的网站（有点像允许顾客匿名点评企业的Yelp）即将上线，以后我们若想看看人们对于彼此都有什么恶毒（以及不那么恶毒）的话可说就有地方可去了。
这些重要吗？ Tech Crunch博客的编辑上周指出，它们并不那么重要。他表示，人们在网上的名声或许是不可控制的猛兽，但它们没有牙齿：它们不可能真正伤害到我们。
为了检验这种理论，我对一个在现实世界中名声通常相当不错的男人――耶稣基督(Jesus Christ)――做了一些研究。哎呀，耶稣在网络上的名声会让他的公关顾问感到沮丧。如果你"谷歌"(Google)一下"耶稣"，第一个出现的网站是维基百科，它告诉我们耶稣是历史上最有影响力的人物之一，1980年前的4月4日，他或许已经复活了。
但是随后就有些不妙了。排在第二位的网站是"为耶稣穿衣"(Jesus Dress Up)！在这个网站上，有一副一只小兔子被钉在十字架上的图片，你可以拖动一些时髦的服装为它穿衣，包括紫色的靴子和粉色的内裤。
就是在Twitter上，情况也好不到哪儿去。实际上，目前耶稣似乎以多种形象出现在我们中间，手里拿着黑莓，发送着tweet。Jesus、JesusHChrist、Jesus_Christ――以及数十个中间带有姓名首字母、圆点或下划线的耶稣变体纷纷假借这个上帝之子的名义说着一些骗人的言论。
甚至更令人震惊的是，在Twitter上，"圣枝主日"(Palm Sunday)是上周最流行的话题之一，但当我点击它时，却发现上面充斥着色情内容。
所有这些对耶稣的名声有什么影响吗？我认为它没有任何影响。这种东西是随意和低级的，如果它们会影响到人们对耶稣的看法，我将会吃惊不已。
网上有关耶稣的东西只向你说明了一件事，那就是他相当出名。许多人对他感兴趣，尽管与某些人比起来有所逊色，比如说Lady Gaga――在我测试的那一天，她被tweet的次数大约是耶稣的5倍。
你可能会说，耶稣不是一个很好的例子，理由如下：第一，耶稣早在网络诞生前2000多年就已声名远扬；第二，人们信任耶稣的程度远高于你我这样的凡人；三，他已经不在人世，他的事情都发生在很久以前。
但我仍然认为，即使是对我们这些仍然活着的、不像耶稣那样能够激发强烈情感的人来说，也不必过于担心自己在网上的名声。网络上的轻率言论已经多到和津巴布韦的货币一样没有价值。实际上，如果人力资源部门真的在意Facebook上的醉酒图片，那么30岁以下的人就都不能雇佣了。负面的言论甚至更不值一提。任何人，只要在公司获得一些成绩担任一定职务，如果去找的话，都能发现有人在网上匿名发布关于自己的极不友好的言论。
第一次看到有关自己的恶劣言论时，我非常沮丧。但随后我注意到生活似乎和往常一样还在继续，其他人甚至都不会注意到这些事情。第二次我就没那么介意了。成年人的脸皮似乎会越来越厚（尽管对青少年来讲可能不是这么回事）。
然而即便如此，人们似乎仍然介意网上的言论，达到了不理智的程度。上周，尽管一些博主认为名声已经不再重要，但一篇令人震惊的报道却让另一些人义愤填膺：有些医生竟然在谷歌上搜索自己病人的情况。《哈佛精神病学评论》(Harvard Review of Psychiatry)上的一篇文章称，医生查询病人是出于好奇、窥阴癖和习惯，而病人感觉自己的隐私受到了侵犯。
在我看来，这是最为古怪的回应。如果17亿网民一点鼠标，就可以获得某些信息，那这些信息就算不上什么隐私。我认为，医生能够实实在在看到的你身体的某个部分，要远比他们在网上找到的任何东西都更为隐秘。
这并不是说我愿意让自己的医生"谷歌"我。我不会乐意的，我会火冒三丈。我在当地医疗中心的预约时间是5分钟，如果医生利用开始的3分钟时间察看能在谷歌上发掘出什么信息，那就太令人气愤了。
译者/君悦
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001032200
There's no point in trying to manage your reputation on the internet any more. It's too late. Skeletons are out of their cupboards and rampaging about online, and anyone can say whatever they like about a company or a person without fear of redress.
Soon it'll get even worse: a website for sniping about people is to be launched that will be like Yelp - which allows consumers anonymously to slag off companies - so that there will be one place for us all to go to read all the nasty (and less nasty) things that everyone has to say about everyone else.
Does this matter? Not really, argued the editor of the blog Tech Crunch last week . He said our online reputations might be uncontrollable beasts, but they are toothless ones: they can't really hurt us.
To check out this theory, I have done some research on a man who has mostly enjoyed a pretty good offline reputation: Jesus Christ. Alas, his online presence contains much to upset his PR advisers. If you Google "Jesus" the first site is Wikipedia, which tells us that he was one of the most influential figures in history and that 1,980 years ago yesterday, he may have risen from the dead.
But after that things deteriorate. The next site listed is Jesus Dress Up! which has a picture of a bunny nailed to a cross and invites you to drag across nifty little outfits, including purple boots and pink panties, to clothe him.
Over on Twitter, things aren't much better. Indeed, Jesus appears to be walking among us now in many guises, with BlackBerry in hand and tweeting away. Jesus, JesusHChrist, Jesus_Christ, and dozens of variants with different middle initials, dots and underscores are busily supplying dodgy soundbites from the son of God.
Even more alarming is that on Twitter, "Palm Sunday" was one of the most popular topics last week, but when I clicked on it I found myself cast into a sea of pornography.
What does all this do to the reputation of Jesus? I don't think it does anything. This stuff is random, low grade and I would be amazed if any of it affected what anyone feels about him one way or another.
The only thing that Jesus's online presence tells you is that he is pretty famous. A lot of people are interested in him, though not quite as much as in, say, Lady Gaga, who, on the day of my tests, was tweeted about five times as much.
You could say that Jesus is a bad example because a) his reputation predated the internet by some 2,000 years b) people believe in him rather more strongly than, say, in you or me c) he's dead and it all happened rather a long time ago.
But even for those of us who are alive and don't inspire such strong feelings as Jesus does, I still think we needn't worry too much about our own presence online. There are so many indiscretions to be found on the internet that they are as devalued as the Zimbabwean currency. Indeed, if HR departments took any notice of drunken Facebook pictures, there would be no one under 30 left to hire. Negative views matter even less. Everybody who has had any measure of success climbing the corporate ladder will find horrible things about them posted anonymously if they go out looking.
The first time I read something beastly about me I was upset. But then I noticed that life appeared to be proceeding as before and that no one else had even noticed. The next time I minded less. With adults (though possibly not with teenagers), extra skins seem to grow.
Yet even so, people still seem to mind more about the things written on the internet than makes sense. Last week, while some bloggers were arguing that reputation was dead, others were getting steamed up at the apparently shocking revelation that some doctors are Googling their patients. According to an article in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry, doctors are looking up patients out of curiosity, voyeurism and habit, and patients feel their privacy has been breached.
This strikes me as a most eccentric response. If something is available to 1.7bn people at the click of a mouse, it isn't terribly private. What your doctor can actually see of your body strikes me as much more alarmingly intimate than anything they can find out online.
That isn't to say I'd be happy for my doctor to Google me. I wouldn't: I'd be furious. As appointment slots at my local health centre are five minutes long, it would be maddening if she started using three of them to see what she could unearth on Google.
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