That time I was a crafty robot.

I can remember it vividly: flexible ducting that almost reached my wrists, something approximating a papier-maché mask, a grey-painted cardboard box (including buttons), and some grey gloves. Perhaps most importantly there were also two bottles of beer, each on their road to completion. Nearby were two lengths of ducting that fit over the legs as well, but they were never going to fit for me. My friend’s ailment (cystic fibrosis) kept him rail thin, and it was his costume, after all.

There’s a lot to like about the character Bender, from Futurama. He’s funny, and has something of a permanent ‘devil-may-care’ attitude about him. It’s also reasonably easy to be him at, say, a university Halloween party, if you have the time and inclination. The character’s urges towards dipsomania aren’t a terrible match for a uni party either, though my friend’s condition largely precluded him from inclusion there. After some time doing a cool and jaunty robot walk around the party getting high-fived, though, he simply got too hot; such were the fervency of the fives, I can only suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-79gauYW9I – a wholesome reminder of the character in question, should you need it.

My friend was slight and shiny-livered but I, at least six inches taller and with 50+ additional pounds on me, thought I could do this character justice, in his sweaty absence. The costume was quick to put on, and at least one of the bottles that ended up in frame was very definitely mine. It’s possible they both were – I don’t know? I’m just a simple bending robot. I just posed for a photo – I have no idea who took it – and went back to whatever less cartoonish getup I had on previously, thinking little of it.

I then proceeded to think not at all about this for at least 5 years, until I started to think about working as a teacher. Viewed from a personal-use approach to social media, it was a sweet photo: it wasn’t perfectly framed, but I made a good Bender. I’d watched the show, I knew what to do to be vibe-accurate. The issue came up when my PDP cohort were getting advised on digital footprints and their impact – and oh man, it occurred suddenly to me that I very definitely had a non-zero number of publicly-accessible photos of me method-acting a character known for pouring beer into its shiny maw on an endless loop (think Homer eating donuts in Hell, if you’re more of a Simpsons fan)… this was probably the kind of thing they were talking about.

Thus began the great self-scouring of my social media, as I adapted to a nascent reality: if I was going to become a teacher, I was going to be a teacher at all times whether I wanted to or not. To prepare to represent something I wasn’t yet, but that I’d watched my parents be, I had to move from a personal to a professional (or at least my best guess thereof) approach to social media use. If I was photographed doing something bizarre (or robotically sweet), or if I ran my mouth online…I would be doing it as a person who is vetted by a profession, and will probably hear about it from other members of said group. This of course wasn’t something my parents (both teachers, now both almost 80) had to worry much about, but then again Futurama hadn’t come out yet, back then.

Thus the ‘professional’ era of social media was ushered in – though I still find avenue to look foolish in the field of sports fandom/predictions occasionally – and behind it closed a door to a world of carefree online life. If I could go back to a scrutiny-free internet existence… I’d surely consider it. Imagine the freedom to be able to identifiably tell someone to, and I quote, “bite my shiny metal ass” in a public or online forum and mean it, and know that it won’t come back around in some way! Since I enjoy paying rent and being able to eat regularly, though… and live on a small island where people have little to do but pry… the way in which I represent myself online has to be informed by reality; my best robotic days are behind me.

Did you have to go through a similar ‘great scouring’ of your own? I’m interested in hearing about it, if only to determine if “[m]y story is a lot like yours, only more interesting ’cause it involves robots” (good old Bender).