I claim no prowess to the etiquette fuzz, nor do I claim ANY sort of continued experience with awful users. But I have eyes and they read words that translates into my opinions.
When friends post reminders about social media etiquette, I always think "oh right. some people blow." Some people will never understand what they're doing from the comfort of anywhere, isn't proper decorum. But like how could people not know how to behave? whoops. stop me right there. Our world is filled with boneheads. But still, basic niceties are so engrained into my noodle, it baffles me when others need to be suggestively hinted time and time again not to suck. And by suck, I include both intended shenanigans and non-malicious bad choices. I full on cringe when I see it happen, especially when people I know are the culprits. eep.
Social media pushes boundaries, sets trends and makes life easier, harder or somewhere in between. Cool - get that. But instant access to almost anything has forgotten us one simple notion. There are still analog manners we must apply to our digital personalities. It's like going through school all over again. But now, there's fewer people grading your work or scolding you for being a tool. And right now I believe twitter houses the most offenders.
The other day a friend retweeted something that made no sense to me. Honestly, there are many tweets I must spend time figuring out, simply because there's lots of acronyms and code words and truncations I'm not hip on. get off my lawn. It was because of the few people "tagged / included" (I don't know what it's called) that prompted me to write this. The tweet seemed out of place to include a few particular names you would know, so I expanded it to figure out what it all meant.
That's when almost the entire display of a large desktop unfolded a non-nonsensical conversation between two people I don't know, who included several people you would know. Holy hell. It started with a memed picture and like "you guys rule" kinda thing. Ok. Part of twitter's charm? is interaction with people you may not otherwise have an opportunity to do so. But why should that make allowances to treat ones twitter handle like an object, rather than the person behind it. I was appalled I tell you! I felt so bad to read the "oh yeahs" and "cool" responses that any normal person would say dude, talk amongst yourselves. No One Else Cares.
