Home » Online Etiquette

Online Etiquette

Continuing my theme of having a bit of a rant about things, I’ve been meaning to do a post about the many, many things that people do wrong on social media and it’s kind of escalated this week to the point where I might actually get physically violent soon!

Firstly, I should point out that I am not an expert. Nor do I claim to be a social media guru – which frankly is a bloody stupid thing to be anyway. Why not aspire to be something awesome like a superhero or a one man band or that guy who can juggle Rubiks Cubes and solve them at the same time?!

Secondly, this is not a complete list nor is it instructional. Many of the people I follow do most of these things and once in a while, I might too! I might get a little sweary and sigh a lot when I see these n00b errors but generally it’s bearable.

So, in no particular order:

Follow Fridays on Twitter. Useful when Twitter first started and you had no idea who to follow other than the recommended Bieber, Stephen Fry, Cheryl Cole, Kardashians etc (tip – don’t follow any of these!) but now completely unnecessary UNLESS someone who is relatively entertaining/informative/both has just joined Twitter. In which case you could make the point that they should have joined ages ago….

Still on Follow Fridays #ff if you get mentioned in one, well done. But you don’t need to retweet it to show everyone else how awesome you are. If we’re following you, we already know. And you don’t need to tweet everyone in the same group to say thanks!

Retweeting is good. Favouriting a tweet is also good but not as good. Complaining because someone you don’t follow has favourited your tweet makes you look silly. They have favorited it because they liked it, wanted to read it later or just want to keep it. If you don’t want people reading your tweets, lock your bloody account!

However retweeting is not good when you pass off a joke/photo as your own. You’d be miffed if someone did it to you.
Hashtag games – changing the word of a song/film/book to boobs/willy/bum/sex/whatever. Hardly ever as funny as you think and actually quite boring. Plus they clutter up my timeline. Thankfully, I do have a mute function on my app so if I’m quick you’re gone!

Hashtagging a programme you’re watching is good, spoilers are bad and if you do it regularly then you’re a twat.

Conversations on Twitter – don’t. If you need to ask your other half to pick up milk, meet you in the pub, scratch your arse then use sms or whatsapp or email or even talk to them!

Abbreviating. You have 140 characters to make your point. Keep it in English (or whichever language you tweet in). There is never any need for text speak – thanks to @goodbye_PMS for that one! And use punctuation for God’s sake, we’re not animals!

Typing errors. If you can’t spell, use spellcheck. We all make mistakes occasionally but at least use the right there/their/they’re.

And now Facebook, of which I’m guilty of a few but not all.

Inspirational messages/quotes/pictures of sodding rainbows – don’t. *this also applies to Instagram*

Having your baby as your profile picture – are you not a person any more?

Joint accounts with your other half – instant refusal of friend request.

Letting your kids on Facebook unsupervised – both before and after the age of 13. Check what they’re doing. Correct both theirs and their friends grammar! Don’t let your daughters post photos of them looking slutty and pouty at their webcam, it’s wrong. Let them have respect for themselves and others and if they complain, remind them that they are still bloody children!

Stupid group messages that ask you to post your status update as your bra colour, when you lost your virginity etc to support breast cancer. The only thing that supports breast cancer is funding and regular check ups – posting a random collection of words as your Facebook status does absolutely fuck all.

Attention seeking status. ie “oh my god, that was so bad I don’t know what to do” The people who will respond will be the online equivalent of accident rubberneckers. Your actual friends will be the ones on the phone to you.

Posting scary warnings about how Facebook is tracking your every thought and movement but if you just click this button and do this it will all be fine. Two things with this a) if you don’t know how to set up your privacy settings then delete your account and b) you’re worrying about Facebook yet sharing and entrusting everything to Apple and Android and Amazon and all the other evil empires. Sigh.

Sharing something that was on Twitter weeks ago.

Now Instagram which is generally pretty low on the vexation scale. Just post your pictures and the keyword here is your. Not more bloody inspirational pictures and quotes, something that really upsets my friend @ernmander. And not fifteen different pictures of what is essentially the same thing, just choose the good one. And not 47 hashtags either (exception made for my friend who is actually a professional Instagrammer).

That’s pretty much all I have for now. I’m sure there is lots more though… Oh I forgot one that was sent to me by my lovely Twitter friend @TGoS – people who say there are rules for social media!

Related Posts

One thought on “Online Etiquette

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *