This blog was originally published in 2013 and I was going to amend it before promoting it again, but I thought I should leave it as a snapshot of my thoughts at that time.
I have a confession to make. I love Twitter.
I like Face Book as well, but Twitter is like an ongoing conversation with the world, rather than a tool to catch up with friends.
I admit that trying to keep the conversations going with so many interesting people takes commitment. Sometimes real life takes over so the addiction to social media wanes, but it stays in the background with a cast of characters who I can revisit at my whim.
But talking to people from around the globe can, at times, have it setbacks. There’s been two occasions when I’ve been sweared at, taken by surprise at how a conversation can go so wrong.
The first is a recent set back when I tweeted my Friday Follow list.
To explain Friday Follow to the uninitiated, its a way to introduce your followers to like minded people. You simply tweet a list of social media contacts with #FF in front of it, and your followers can decide who they want to know more about.
And in this multiple app age I use software to help me match my followers up. One drawback with this software is that it looks at people I’ve communicated with recently, and not my whole list of followers.
Unexpectedly, one person tweeted back asking for me not to include him on my #FF list. He found it annoying. Sadly I forgot and let the program match up similar minds and tweet my #FFs the following week. He didn’t respond. Out of sight, out of mind.
But the next week, boy, did I cop it!
I was abused in no uncertain terms. I explained politely that an app helps me create these posts, and that if he didn’t want to be included, he shouldn’t respond to me. Plus I added ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’. I really wanted to say that I wished I had his life if this was all he had to complain about, but I held back. Needless to say, he didn’t reply.
The Grndr Guy –
Then there was the guy who was feeling horny and posted a screen shot of his potential pickings on Grndr that night. For those who don’t know, Grndr is a phone app for guys who want to meet other guys for…well, you get the picture.
I pointed out that some of these face shots could be of men in the closet. He responded that he’s just after a quickie. I said that some might have girlfriends. That’s when he told me to ‘get a grip, mate!’ I checked his twitter profile.
He complained about me to another friend.
He also tweeted back to me telling me to F off! It was then I realised he missed my point. Politely, I said these guys are on a discreet site, and that he’d compromised their privacy. He didn’t tweet back.
What struck me most about this last incident is that, although he admitted he was drunk, the idea that he’d published private images of people he didn’t know who believed their identities were safe, hadn’t occurred to him. He took my tirade as a direct attack on him.
So where do you sit on the social media scale?
You have to question people’s personal motives with social media. Just this week an author I started following sent me a private message asking me to look at his blog. It was all about becoming an entrepreneur. I quickly unfollowed him.
Another Facebook friend posts endless selfies, and recently has set his phone to ‘check him in’ everywhere he goes. I’m tempted to Un-friend him.
One of my favourite life philosophies is that when a baby is born it believes it is the centre of the universe because it has no other frame of reference. And this is a good gage of maturity when you meet people. Is this still their mindset or have they worked out there’s other people in the world.
These two categories of people are easy to find on social media.
kevin klehr - author 