AJust a reminder, or heads up to those not in the know, when it comes to anonymity on the internet. I know some don't care, but others do. If you like to vent (I do!), AND your screenname has your business or personal name in any part of it, be careful. I just Googled a couple of names of recent venters, and the threads from this forum popped right up, front and center. Wouldn't take many clicks to see exactly what they like to chat about. Trust me, brides/clients Google us, just as much as we check them out too. Make sure what they find is roses and sunshine.

"ROSES AND SUNSHINE"

$8 a slice...

That's why I use "costumeczar." But if you google my name you'll see a lot of media stuff and a photo of the Elvis impersonator/parody from my wedding since I gave it to the newspaper to use at one point, hahaha!

Great advice....I don't usually vent here, but I will google myself/business just to see what comes up.

ACan't remember specifically, but I know more than one decorator here got busted by a googling bride.

AWow! I never even thought about that! Not an issue for me, but still made me think back pretty hard about things I may have said. Good heads-up! Thanks! :)

Exactly.  There have been times I wanted to "vent" but thought better of it.

Think it and forget it, write it and regret it.

AI should add, that I put the word cake on the end of the user names, which is a likely thing for anyone else to add as well, and naturally since this website has cake in the name, it will include any results from here when the query is ran.

A

makes me miss the Pony Express of my youth...

AWhat about Bing? ;)

there are several other cake businesses out there that share the same name as me, except I have added the name of my town to the end.  Hopefully that won't mess things up for me.  I'm not nearly as concerned from a business perspective as I am from a personal perspective, as my customers all live in my hometown.

AI am a testament to this lol. Thankfully it wasn't a client but a family member and it was easily worked out. Now I just completely refrain from ranting in writing

AYou know I had to go google myself!

AJust googled "sugar rush san angelo" and the first 4 pages of google were pleasing. Then once I got to San Angelo lesbians on pinkcupid.com looking for sugar, I decided it was time to stop.

My mommy told ME: 

1)  NEVER put anything in writing that you don't want anyone to read.

2)  NEVER, EVER let anybody take naked pictures of you.

3)  IF you ever say bad things to someone, or worse, hit them, make sure there aren't any witnesses.   (and always, always make sure they hit you first!)

....and that was BEFORE the internet!

Now that's ADVICE!

AI was just talking about this today. It doesn't take much to find anything you want (or not) with random words on google.

AOh yeah, Bing has a way with words!

Anna, don't you have a cake to bake?!

I just googled my name and found maybe 3 people, possibly 4 with my same name, who are living, and about 5 dead people with my name. My husband has a family cemetery with 4 tombstones with my name on them. A few years ago, I told my kids I was undead, and I had actually died and came back to life 5 times, and showed them the tombstones as "proof". It was my 3rd time there, haha. My daughter was 6 at the time, and she remembers it because she believed me. World's Most Awesome Mommy, right here, lol. She said she wasn't scared because she knows I love her and she loves me too <3 my doll baby. I really am a meanie.

I googled my name, there are 401,000 entrees..LOL  my name is so original.

AI just googled my name; apparently I am deceased.

Annabakescakes~~Mama was right!  I did a google search for my name and there was ....... zippo.

Yup.  Boring as he*l.  (and no selfies!)

1.  It makes me rather relieved I don't have a business of my own...not that I vent a lot online, but when I have, they've been HUGE UGLY vents, and thankfully I've never done it here...as of yet, anyway.

2.  On a greater scale, I've seen how this transparency has affected certain things, and I'm not certain it's for the better.  I think there still is a time and place to be anonymous.  Most of the message boards I frequent, including this one, are so large that unless one is looking specifically for a particular person or wants to spam (like what happened here the other week) I don't think anyone would be diligent enough to comb through every single member's profile.  Heck, I've belonged to another message board for 10+ years that has its own FB page, and even though people's RL names are on that page, everyone still refers to each other by their usernames!

3.  That said, there's a reason why I don't post photos in the gallery here.  It's not that I don't want to share them -- it's that I don't want anything else linking back to my username here because I've also used this particular username elsewhere.

4.  I discuss all this every so often with my younger nieces/nephews.  They think I'm a dinosaur because I don't like sharing a lot of RL things online.  I tell them it's because I'm from the first generation of the internet where the whole point of being on the internet was to be anonymous :D