Christine Deakers

Live your online life like your real life.  Google yourself and see what comes up. Erase the social data you don’t want the public to know about, or privatize the shiz out of the channels you want to monitor to begin to improve your online presence. People have the right to privacy unless it compromises the safety of the greater social contract.

 
2.11.TW.2
 
Everyone should exercise their first amendment right online, but clogging up a newsfeed with your every move makes people uneasy, leaves little to the imagination, and reminds people of that stalker song by The Police.
 
If Facebook or Twitter were a party, who would you want to be? The Sweat Cat spewing irrelevant details of her life? Or the demur lady who has a quick wit and leaves more to the imagination? Eat all the champagne and drink all the caviar you’d like, you fancy lady, you!
 
Share like a generous, helpful friend and sparingly divulge personal tales as long as the time is appropriate for personal or social betterment. Did you post some ignorant tool-ish statement that puts the human race behind half a century? We kindly ask you to leave the party, a.k.a. the Interwebz, to salvage your online presence.
 
You would never leave your belongings lying around or pass your PIN number out to a rando on the street, so don’t save your passwords on your computer or access confidential information via public clouds or WIFI. Hackers aren’t as hot as that girl with the dragon tattoo, but they will pilfer information and sell it indiscriminately in an attempt to ruin your life.
 
Don’t indulge in FOMO (Fear of Missing Out); it’s a weird made-up social anxiety people indulge in because of mobile social apps, over-active imaginations, and low self-esteem. You’re not the only person who didn’t go to that party where everyone ended up jumping into the swimming pool with their clothes on.
 
A Facebook sociologist claimed the average user closely interacts with four to six people despite having hundreds to thousands of friends. Facebook helps you keep tabs on people, it’s a virtual watering hole for social news and memes, but it shouldn’t be a replacement for true human interaction.
 
When you run into a “friend” in the real world by chance, you can cut the small talk and see that they really are 10 pounds heavier, yet more beautiful because they are there in the flesh and not photo-shopped on a screen. (Note: If you’re the type of person who photo-shops their own photos before posting them, please stop it.)
 
Check your credit card statements often enough to realize that you didn’t buy something on iTunes last night at 1:30am (instead you were busy texting your best friend). Yes, that was fraud and the hacker that’s trying to steal your entry-level wages probably isn’t as hilariously incompetent as Melissa McCarthy was in Identity Theft.
 
Live off the grid from time to time to rejuvenate from the 'smart' world. Leave your phone at home, turn it off, or simply put it on airplane mode to stop getting messages. In all our efforts to stay “connected,” we strive to make distant people closer, but it can cause our close friends to become distant. Don’t worry – your online presence will remain intact.
 

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