Social media etiquette

Image via CrunchBase

I like antisocial media. I use it quite a lot – between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus I probably get into double digits when it comes to the number of times I check social media sites. And I probably enjoy reading people’s posts, seeing their photos, laughing at videos and thinking about blog posts far more than I let on, because I’m really not very good at publicly ‘liking’ them.

But that’s what annoys me most about other people! I take the time to write a witty, clever observation in 140 characters, and how many retweets/favourites/likes/thumbs up do I get? None! This leads me to two potential conclusions:

1. It wasn’t that witty or clever; people just didn’t like it that much.
2. People did like it, but it would have taken a moment to have pressed like or whatever, so they didn’t.

Now, ignoring the fact that I’m almost certainly not as witty or clever as I think I am, I’m going to lean towards the second conclusion because that’s how I use social media; Facebook and everything else is all about me! It’s not about me liking other people’s work, it’s about me putting a fun picture up there, and everyone else thinking, ‘Wow, Sam’s definitely both clever and witty.’

I’m part of an online community of bloggers, and there’s a reasonable proportion of the community who log on, post a link to their blog, and don’t even bother to look at other people’s stuff (as far as anyone can tell). They’re known as post-and-runners, and they’re annoying.

I wonder, would social media be a nicer place if we all publicly liked each other more?

This may be a tenuous verse to bring in, but I reckon it fits:

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Related articles

• A Week Without Social Media (kevmill.wordpress.com)
• Are We Losing Friendships Over Social Media? (blogher.com)
• Social media changes experience of being “snowed in” (denverpost.com)
• 10 Social Media Sins to Ditch for Your Valentine’s Day Date (liveconsciouslynow.com)
• Do you need to work on your social media etiquette? (immediatefuture.co.uk)
• Should social media classes be taught to kids? (worldradio.ch)

Do you suffer from FOMO?

A protester holding a placard in Tahrir Square referring to Facebook and Twitter, acknowledging the role played by social media during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The way that social media has taken over everything has led to a brand new disease: Fear Of Missing Out.

Seriously. You go on holiday from the internet for a couple of weeks, then come back and realise that you’ve missed out on hundreds, nay, thousands of updates on your Facebook timeline, Twitter feed, RSS reader and everything else – how much useful and vital information have you missed out on?!

So what do you do? Not go on holiday from the internet is what! Go on holiday from everything else, but still keep up-to-date with blogs and Facebook. You’re not an idiot.

But just in case you’re afraid that you might be, there’s a useful little article with the solution to FOMO.

Becoming me

Last week I was surprised to be contacted by a guy who was basically my best friend when I was 10. In a surprise twist, it wasn’t through Facebook!

Anyway, I moved house when I was 11 but he didn’t, so he stayed in touch with the people I went to school with, and when I found him on Facebook I was abl

Image via Wikipedia

e to dig through his friends and see a whole bunch of my old friendship group – great news!

What’s really interesting is that I can look at all their pictures and I see two people: them now, but mostly them as a 10 year-old. And, of course, they probably do the same when they look at me. The thing is, I don’t think I’d get on very well with my 10 year-old self – he was a bit of an idiot to be honest.

It sort of struck me that I never stopped being me, it’s just that ‘me’ changed over the last couple of decades.

But God doesn’t change. As I get older, I’ll change my hairstyle and my attitude, but God doesn’t change a single thing. That’s good news by the way.

For goodness’ sake, BE HAPPY!

There’s a thought-provoking article over here right now explaining that the combination of Facebook, Twitter, and church make people sad. Here’s why:

In general, everyone posts happy stuff on the internet. Even when it’s something sad it’s normally accompanied by some funny comment or a little smiley:

Just failed my driving test. Oh well, at least I can still drive my wife up the wall

Russell Moore thinks that this gets particularly bad around baby pictures (to all my friends: I love your baby pictures, please keep posting them!) because people post happy pictures. In actual fact, most parents of babies are tired and stressed, but there’s pressure to be happy from Facebook.

And the global church doesn’t help with this. We sing songs of praise and gladness. We talk about God being good all the time, and in general church people feel under pressure to keep up appearances on a Sunday morning.

Looking at Twitter, Facebook and church can actually make us sadder than we would be because everyone else seems comparably happier than us.

Christians, let’s be encouraged to be real with one another, never forgetting the apostle Paul’s words written from prison:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. (Philippians 4:4)

Geotagging and security

Now my job is in technology risk so perhaps I’m just switched on to stuff like this, but this article is a good example of something I always try to be careful of…most smartphones now have automatic ‘geotagging’ switched on, so that anyone with enough technical know-how could quite easily (a) track your regular movements, and (b) tell where you were at any given time.

In other words, some random could find out where I live by looking at where my phone is located during the night, figure out my shifts and regular patterns outside of the home, and happily break in when they know I’m not there…

That’s why I’ve switched off all geotagging and why my Twitter status is never ‘Going on holiday tomorrow for a week, yaaay!!!1111′…maybe I’m just paranoid – thoughts anyone?