Transparency

I just watched a great story of web transparency unfold. It goes like this:

A recently-minted MD–I’ll call him AsshatMD–decides he wants to blog. AsshatMD wants to blog anonymously, because he likes to insult people. In particular, he likes to bad-mouth nurses. A sampling:

Most of the Hispanic girls came from community centers managed by certified nurse midwives (CNMs), nursing “specialists” perhaps even more incompetent than CRNAs (how OB-GYNs tolerate them I do not know; they’re acerbic, ignorant and foolhardy and generally built like linebackers).

Naturally, he doesn’t want real-life nurses (or, as he calls them, “bulldogs disguised as nurses”) to read this stuff. After all, he may have to face them in person at his hospital.

In his most recent blog, AsshatMD takes to task pregnant women who have the temerity to hold opinions differing from his, particularly on the subject of how they should give birth. He makes observations such as this one: “I’m tired of having to manage precarious medical situations because New Age mothers prefer to be irresponsible [...]” by “clamoring” for natural childbirth and declining offers of anesthesia.

It follows that AsshatMD’s blog comes to the attention of a feminist blogger, who offers it as an example of, well, asshattery. AsshatMD promptly comments on the feminist blogger’s site: “This is apparently a blog which caters to rabid (and exceedingly retarded) lesbian manhaters.”

Not surprisingly, other people visiting the feminist blog begin to speculate about what might happen if AsshatMD were outed. Suppose his supervisor got wind of Asshat’s misogynistic writings? People take note of Asshat’s self-proclaimed credentials: his alma mater, the hospital where he claims to have done his residency, and so forth.

But wait! Dr. Asshat’s credentials begin to change. At 2PM he’s a physician living in Northern California who attended Cornell; by 4PM he’s a “District of Columbia” doctor from UCLA.

By 5PM, his site is down; closed for business. By 6PM, a webpage that had previously linked to his site has disappeared. AsshatMD is trying to erase his anonymous existence.

Too late, though. By this time my curiosity was piqued. I’m not sure what came over me; I’m a technical writer, not a private detective. I guess I wanted to see what I could do with Google and a laptop. So I did it–I tracked him down.

I’m not going to out AsshatMD. But it’s interesting to know that even after he had taken down his site, it took me less than an hour to find his name, including middle initial, as well as his religion, academic history, part of the country he calls home, and more. I read a short article he authored about a fraudulent “cancer curing” juice. I even found a photo of him. Oh, and by the way, I have no special technical skills in this area. I’m sure others would have had him in minutes.

To all the Asshats out there: For the sake of the reading public, please assume that anything you post on the web leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that leads, inexorably, back to sweet little old you. Maybe if the Asshats of the world understood this one truth, there would be less asshattery on the web.

We can only hope.