Social Media Jackass

(The following is a personal view expressed by Phillip J Rhoades formed under the influence of caffeine and annoyance)

• Are you a blogger (aka citizen journalist)?
• Did you put your contact information up for everyone to find?
• Are people contacting you about news in the field that you report on?
• Are you complaining because you’re being contacted?
• Did you “friend” someone on facebook and then complain about what they post, suggest, or send you?
• Did you follow someone on twitter and then complain about how many tweets they send out?

If the above sounds like you, then you are probably a Social Media Jackass. Buck up, shut up, and listen. You signed on for all of this. You made yourself a public persona and posted your contact information for people to find. You will receive pitches for both stuff that you actually think is cool and stuff that only the creators think is cool. You made this a part of your life and it’s time you owned up to it.

If you’re complaining about “spam” on facebook or twitter, shut up. You opted into those channels of information and you can opt out at any time. Just click unfollow or unfriend or whatever. Wow, that’s hard, so very hard, oh my god, how could I ever expect you to simply click on a link or a button. . . oh wait that’s not hard at all.

Look, stop being an idiot. Stop acting like receiving an email, or a page suggestion on Facebook, or a tweet (direct or otherwise) is some sort of personal violation. It’s not. It’s just simply not. You’re a big boy or girl and it’s time you started acting like it.

You don’t like receiving emails? Don’t put your contact information up. You’ll miss out on a lot of cool press releases, information, etc, but that’s what you want, right? To speak to the world, but to never have the world speak to you. See? Easy, just remove your contact information and no one will ever contact you again.

Don’t like the volume or quality of posts, statuses, updates, or whatever that someone on twitter, facebook, or social media website x has been posting, just unfollow, unfriend, or unwhatever it happens to be on that site. It’s pretty easy and saves everyone involved a lot of trouble. Plus you get to just quietly ignore someone who was annoying you instead of looking like a whiny little twit.

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Tagged as: blogger, Facebook, journalist, Online Communities, Opt-out, social media, Social Networking, Social Networks, Twitter