Social Media Police: How To Respond?

For the purpose of this post, we are referring to the category of social media police who police the grammar or spelling of those that they friend, follow or troll on social media. Some may also refer to them as grammar police.

Case of the Social Media Police

It's the year 2022 and you are on social lockdown; confined to your home because of the novel Corona virus sweeping the world. At home, you find things to occupy your time including staying connected with family and friends via social media. At the end of another long quarantine day, house bound, you logon to social media to share something interesting, inspiring or profound that happened in the day.

You are still online and suddenly a notification pops up indicating some feedback on your thoughtful post. It's a one word response of someone correcting a single word in your post...

How do you respond?

Response #1
You can fight fire with fire; let them know they completely missed the point and that the block and delete button is waiting for them if they keep it up.
Or...

Response #2
You can educate them on the process of communucation and point out that your channel (social media page) is meant for an informal audience, not their boss or professor. Then, if they still don't get it, remind them of your block and delete policy. Lol
Or...

Response #3
If you don't have time to waste on a Social Media Grammar police send them the link to
read The Process of Communication and The Context of Communication so they can stimulate their "intellect” somewhere other than your social media page.

Check on your friends this COVID19 season

A COVID 19 Reminder...

If you're reading this and you're a Social Media Police; be nice. People are dying in the world and others are anxious at home. We all need to use social media to remain connected. Interpersonal communication is a human need. Also, not everything you see online requires negative, critical feedback and especially if you could be wrong and be totally missing the point of the message. Let's spread the love and not the germs.

To everyone; stay safe at home and use the social channels available to communicate and be mentally healthy at home.


Ever had to deal with a Social Media Police? How did you respond?

YouTube Abuse

No doubt, YouTube is one of the superstars on the social media scene right now. That is why I must get off my chest a problem that has been bugging me. I recently did some research on the brand for MSL Worldwide  for Advertising Week 2012 and YouTube has had an impressive five year history. What makes the site so great is that it is a repository of rich and unique content 'for the people by the people'.
I really appreciate the opportunity to share but...

I really appreciate the opportunity to share but...

 It absolutely grates on my nerve when:

1. Half of a person's presentation is swallowed up by a random YouTube video - even if the video is instructional. Please do not waste people's time. Quite likely a person is listening to you to receive 'your' insight on a topic; not the views of 'purplelollipop350' who uploaded the video. Once again, if people have ready access to it, don't belabor the video in the presentation unless it is an important lead up to your information.YouTube has an entire section dedicated to instructional use by schools where content is sorted by subject matter on YouTube Edu. If this is the kind of session you have planned for your audience, please let them know in advance.

2. People just pluck videos from the site for use in major professional presentations and workshops with no credit to the person who created it. Who are these presenters trying to impress, really? I for one am not. I also have access to YouTube and when I search the title of the video I can not only see that you did not create it but that you are one of 756,000 people to have viewed it.

3. Okay I wanted a third thing but there really are just these two main things.

For fascinating YouTube stories check out their FiveYear anniversary channel.
For more social media info check out SocialMediaDaily.

Drop a comment to share your own YouTube abuse observations.

If social media could be owned...

I've often wondered...

'If social media could be owned by one person or entity...who would it be?" Would it be the wealthy tech guru Bill Gates, the charismatic Oprah Winfrey, the regal Queen of England or the powerful US White House? The reality is that no one owns social media and no one ever will. Social media is governed by the people who use it to share information and to make connections.

"The reality is that no one owns social media and no one ever will."

Any attempt to drastically regulate it or make it authoritarian will probably result in disuse. The communal ownership of social is what has given rise to this new and exciting era of uninhibited sharing.  Even the creators of platforms have watched as their ideas morphed beyond their expectations based on user habits and patterns. Social media continues to evolve and we social media enthusiasts continue to marvel at the ways in which people are able to connect and carve out meaning from endless streams of information. It's always interesting to read up on the history of these social platforms and how they came to be. An interesting movie to see if you haven't seen it is, the Social Network, based on the evolution of Facebook . Check out the trailer below:



For more on all things Social Media check out Social Media Daily.

The Revolutionary Social Media

Social media is currently one of the most used, talked about, underrated and misunderstood 'things' of the 21st century. I just know that somewhere out there people are busting their brains undertaking some serious studies about the psychological, political and economic impact of social media. I am no expert but I just have to join in on the social media bandwagon by sharing my top 5 observations about the revolutionary Social Media!

1. Legitimizes Stalking
Before social media, 'stalking' was one of those taboo words and certainly no normal person would want to be caught stalking or be referred to as a stalker or worse admit to stalking! These days people have no qualms about it. It's just what we (sorry, they) do! Send someone a friend request, wait for them to accept, once they accept don't even say 'Hey, how're u doing? Thanks for the add'...psssh. Just get straight to work browsing though their pictures and scrolling down their walls. If you're lucky they'll like something everybody else likes or copy and paste the last person who commented on anything. They are so in your face with it. Come on people it's call social media for a reason, at least say something meaningful once in a while.

2. Makes Everyone a News Reporter
Who needs to watch local news, the radio or *gasp* read the local paper when we are all employed to the FNN (Facebook News Network) and the TNW (Twitter News Wire) as news anchors, field reporters, weather forecasters, sports commentators extraordinaire? Lol. Seriously, we know we are doing or jobs well when the local news now looks to our tweets, statuses, walls and likes for news headlines :)

3. Could Make You an Expert
If you really calculate the time spent reading particular tweets, statuses and wall posts by particular people on specific topics it would be the equivalent of a liberal arts course/degree. Depending on which brand's or content curator's page you visit most frequently, at the end of the year you could walk away being an expert in music, cuisine, wealth management, politics, the possibilities are endless.

4. Puts 'Ideas' in Your Head
I'm not talking about the annoying (sorry informational) ads here. Follow me carefully...there is a particular social media site that has some secret matchmaking agenda. I won't go calling any names around here, but when you login and you see a long list of  people 'Similar to you'? It begs the question...'And who are you to determine that Twitter?' This is also helpful in the sense that it takes all the guess work out of who to connect with, #genius and this brings me to my last point...

5. Invented Hash Tag Abuse
Ok. I really wanted to have my five serious special observations to share, but I don't know what more I could say except....... 'Does anybody know what really happened to Google Wave?' #justasking #theyjustupanddisappeared #beenaskingforalongtimenow #seriously :D