You are what you share

I had a conversation over the weekend with a friend who finds social media as frustrating as I do. We both regularly encountered people who share far too much, far too frequently, with far too little consideration for the feelings of those who might be seeing it. We decided the old Bill Cosby joke is fully applicable to social media. He mentions speaking to someone who defends their use of cocaine, because it “intensifies your personality”, to which Bill Cosby replies, “Yes, but what if you’re a [jerk]?”

In that light, social media and cocaine have that in common. It intensifies whatever your personality may be because it’s so easy to just blurt out whatever comes to mind. It breaks down inhibitions. It makes you believe everyone has a right to your opinion. This is okay if you’re the type of person who doesn’t like to be controversial or negative, or pick a fight. But there are those who enjoy social media as a full-contact sport.

If the trendiness of social media continues we might be well-served to teach our children courses on marketing. One of the basic tenets of marketing is to know your audience and tailor your message to that audience. Most businesses don’t have the money to try and target their message to everyone, nor do they need to. Why would the makers of “Depends” want to buy advertising time during kids cartoons? Would the distributor of the latest chick-flick want to buy time during a NASCAR race? Or mens razors during a soap opera?

This applies just as much to ourselves online, except we don’t usually think about who might be reading our posts. If we see a post that puts one of our beliefs in a cleverly-worded way, or strongly reinforces something we agree with we tend to share it. We generally don’t sit there first and think about who might see it and if it might have the desired response. We repost as a self-congratulatory fist pump; a virtual “my side rocks! Go us!”

It generally doesn’t cross our minds that we have people on our friends list who may not agree with that. They may not know our beliefs well enough to realize that while you may agree with the general sentiment of the post/pic, your own beliefs may be more evolved or nuanced than that. They have no reason to believe you’re not in 100% agreement with the person whose content you’re sharing.

Now, obviously there is a fairly wide variety of topics on which one may post, and a good majority are not going to cause offense. I could probably post something declaring  that, “John Tesh is the greatest musician of all time” and I probably won’t deeply offend anyone. They may scratch their heads, may tease me a bit, or may openly disagree, but chances are there won’t be anywhere near the intensity of feeling as if your post attacks someone’s religious or political beliefs. Even the dog people vs. cat people, as passionate as they can get, usually make allowances for personal taste.

But for some reason when we’re online we tend to ignore the age-old addage of not discussing politics or religion. Web-surfing is generally a private experience, so it’s easy to forget that there are people on the other side of the interface. The things we feel the most passionate about tend to get us to repost the most easily. And if we’ve seen someone else’s meme-pic blasting our beliefs, it’s an almost irresistable temptation to throw one back in their face.

In a world where internet and social media are so ubiquitous, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate our personal and public lives. Employers are increasingly looking at applicants’ social media presence. What are they going to see when they visit you? Like it or not, you’re building a brand with every post you make. What brand message are you putting out there? Are you advertising yourself as the “King of Jerks” or “You’re in good hands with {your name here}”?

Nothing is truly private online. Have you seen those posts about “embarrassing auto-correct chats”? How do you think those get made public? Someone gets a screen-capture and boom! It’s all over the ‘net. You may have your Facebook privacy settings locked down and iron-clad, but anyone with a print-screen button and MS Paint can share your posts, in all their intensified personality, with the world. Privacy is an illusion. Just ask Donald Sterling. Whether he deserved what he got is irrelevant. He thought he was having a private, off-the-record conversation. Now he’s a household name and a major social pariah.

So think about it. What does your social media say about you? And who are you saying it to? Is that how you want to be known?