Grrr to 140 characters… a slight rant

All our operators are busy at the moment by Meta-morphosis/Flickr CC 2.0

We all know Twitter as a microblog has taken off. People can click a button and ‘pin’ (save) to a virtual pinboad for others to pin on to their boards and so on…

It is normal to be totally connected and mobile at all waking hours of the day. Able to take, edit, caption, hashtag and post a photo in under 20 seconds.

All of this ‘at your fingertips’ communication can be an amazing thing. But it can also be a curse. I listen with interest to those people telling the tales of why they never got on to Facebook or about their recent action to go SM (social media) free.

It’s the new anti-carbohydrate, anti-consumer, anti-stress, anti-tick tick boom obsession. Saying no to fast news, which really isn’t news at all, just the musings of someone on the internet.

While I love the positive aspects of social media, just like I love the positive aspects of humanity, the lowlights really turn me off.

And I think that a lot more damage can be done in 140 characters than good. Recently I have been shocked at the straight out abuse that people hurl through social media. Is communicating from behind a keyboard any different to communicating from behind a face?

While yes the mechanism is different and the receiver of the message is reading some digital letters on a screen, those letters were chosen and put together by a real person who has the capacity to think before they acted.

I disagree that it is ok to abuse, be rude, be blunt, and effectively digital-scream emotions at people from behind a keyboard. Just because you are operating a piece of machinery does not make it ok. Think before you type and click send.

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