The internet.

If you post something on the internet, it never goes away.

It’s true and it's not.

When you post something on the Internet, it gets written to the hard drive of a server.

It's likely that no one will ever wipe that drive. It's likely that it will be archived by bots. It's certainly a possibility that people will still be able to find it twenty years later.

But I’ve found that, in reality, there's a ton of data rot. Servers get unplugged. Or they get reorganized so links break. There's a lot of content from 20 years ago that simply cannot be found today. So it’s an old wives tale That once on the internet, it stays there for ever.

‘But at the same time, you can bet that if you post a naked photo of yourself it will resurface to embarrass you, especially when you don’t want it to resurface, like when you run for public office, or apply for a high profile job that does a background, or you are about to get married to the love of your life but the friends and family want to make sure you are an outstanding citizen and no scandals will arise. Then the picture or scandalous post will resurface. Even 20 years later. Guaranteed!

Imagine, you are 20 years old, full of life, piss and vinegar, no thoughts about the distant future, heck, no thoughts about next year. Just passing the semester in college or raising enough money to go on that trip you and your friends have been talking about for the last 2 months and it sounds incredible. The beers are cold, the hot tub you are in is hot, the girls in the tub even hotter, and when the spontaneous idea to get naked with them and take a photo shoot to capture the moment was raised, you were all in.

The man behind the camera was my good friend Jay, also known as JaSin, his alto ego, and that should have warned me that this camera shoot wasn’t a good idea, but the girls were stripping off, so what was I going to do? Say no? Hell no, I stripped off in record time and joined them in a huddle all arms entangled and huge grins on our faces. That was fun. What Ja Sin didn’t tell me was that he was going to post it on his Facebook page, and also his Instagram acct, and oh yeah, his X account as well. It turns out he has over 600 followers on all those accounts. And some of his followers shared the post on their social media account. Oh well, I was a nobody, a college kid, no one would care. Actually, it was kind of cool that after a week JaSin showed me his feeds, and there were over 2,000 views and many likes and comments on the post. JaSin followed up on his success by posting another photo of me and him sharing a huge Cheech and Chong joint we were smoking the next night in celebration of my viral notoriety from the naked photo. That photo also was posted all over the web. Boy, was it fun!

anyway, life goes on and eventually I graduated with a criminal justice degree, and then law school. I passed the California bar, and my career was launched. Public prosecutor for a few years, judgeship after that. I was set!

I was approached by the Republican Party to run for a vacant seat on the Supreme Court of California, and I was so excited. I didn’t expect that, and that position wasn’t even on my radar as a career goal. But I was ready and willing. Long story short, I made it, and I felt 10 feet tall. I was a big man on campus. After a few years, I was picked by the President to be the chief justice on the Supreme Court. A life time appointment on the highest court of the land. Wow. Of course I said yes, and then the nightmare began. The senate committee interrogation, the FBI background investigation. After 40 years of a clean, steady life, a wonderful marriage, no skeletons in my closet, or so I thought. It was in a public hearing of the judiciary committee for the senate , a conformation hearing, that the first naked hot tub photo from my college days was produced by a stern democrat senator, who asked me to explain. I explained as best I could but it wasn’t good enough for him. According to his interpretation I was a playboy, probably a rapist who took advantage of the young girls in the photo. If that wasn’t bad enough, the next democrat senator produced the marajuana joint photo, and he asked if I was a drug user. It was all down hill from there. The committee hearing was in an uproar, and the media made hay while the sun shone, and the photos were displayed for millions of Americans to see. Actually, also millions of Europeans, Canadians, everyone around the world. The girls were tracked down and interviewed. Lawsuits were filed. JaSin was tracked down, and he tried to explain but no one wanted to listen. I was dropped from being endorsed by the President and the Republican Party. I couldn’t blame them. My judicial career was over. I found out that what is on the internet stays on the internet.

so, a word from the wise, be careful what you post on the internet. It might (will) come back to bite you.