Perhaps, but in past times you would live your life in a small community of people who would "know" you and would know all kinds of both positive and negative things about you.
What you are looking at in the future is the possibility of having people all over the world who don't really know you at all making judgements about you based on incomplete (even if still comprehensive) and possibly out of context information.
For example "cyber bullying" where what would once be bullying from perhaps a small group of people at a school can be escalated into cases of kids having thousands of hateful messages from people who they have never met posted on their facebook wall or their pictures turned into memes or whatever. For example the "star wars kid".
For example: Imagine going for a job interview in another country and having the interviewer say "you're that idiot who did X" because that is basically how you are known to the world despite your meaningful work in some unrelated area.
A question I'd have is when is reputation more sticky? When you have small pieces of information about another person and don't really know them outside of that 1 dimension? Or when you have a holistic image of them yet for one reason or another its tilted towards like or dislike?
For example, I think in small towns the pariahs and those dubbed 'weird' have a harder time getting rid of their reputation and there was always far more pressure to conform than there is today.
I would imagine the holistic image would be more sticky since that is the one more likely to be shared by a large number of people and is usually the more "exciting" view.
When you become well known in a small town for some particular thing which may give you a bad reputation you have the option to move away or wait for time to fade that reputation somewhat. On the internet there will be hard evidence in existence for perpetuity.
What you are looking at in the future is the possibility of having people all over the world who don't really know you at all making judgements about you based on incomplete (even if still comprehensive) and possibly out of context information.
For example "cyber bullying" where what would once be bullying from perhaps a small group of people at a school can be escalated into cases of kids having thousands of hateful messages from people who they have never met posted on their facebook wall or their pictures turned into memes or whatever. For example the "star wars kid".
For example: Imagine going for a job interview in another country and having the interviewer say "you're that idiot who did X" because that is basically how you are known to the world despite your meaningful work in some unrelated area.