Posting about your Job on social media....that's a paddlin

I feel like taking a moment out of my day to vent my frustration here. The other day on Facebook I had noticed someone complaining that their life didn’t hold up to their unrealistic expectations. They said that their job and their boss was X/Y/Z, and I’m clearly summarizing here because it was a 3-page rant about society and the system.

So me being the wise human being I am (in regards to social media), tells this person in a private message to pull what they had posted, they don’t want people to see that. His response was pretty straight forward:

F-U-C-K Y-O-U

Okay buddy, just trying to do you one a solid here. It wasn’t long after that little cyber space brawl did I notice that he had been let go from his job. Through the grapevine I came to discover one of his co-workers printed out his rant but sent it to his boss.

-paddlin meme-

See the point that I’m trying to make here, is that people are horrible human beings. They will take a shot at you if it’s something that can readily get away with. Sammi Caramela, wrote a pretty good piece back in 2017 about how this could be a disastrous behaviour. I suggest you check it out if you’re looking for a good read. Why you shouldn't post about your job on social media.

Remember for a moment that there are two sides to every coin. One is heads and one is tails, pretty simple? You one side is your facebook and one side is your Linkidin. Now imagine for a moment that what I just said didn’t matter and that both of those applications are connected…because they are.
YOU are a walking billboard for yourself, you are a marketed image, and how you are seen by the world will make or break you. If you’re going to go about saying your boss is a dick, I wouldn’t be shocked that you got fired. If anything, you kinda deserved it because at one point that person took a chance on you. Or at the very least try and show that person more respect than they showed you.
Also consider for a moment that ANY potential employer who is worth a damn is going to check your social media to see who you really are.

“Yes I am an amazing person”

Then outside of the interview they realize you’re a full-blown alcoholic who likes to set things on fire in your spare time.

So in closing for this, I grabbed a simple “do and don’t” (because we love those don’t we.) This is by Rachael Strella, and it covers a few things that are pretty basic by my standards but might not be for you.

She more or less outlines what are the top do’s and don’ts for social media in 2019. I think what she’s had to say will be beneficial for those who are kinda sniffing around the internet after a fresh employer beating but go grab a seat and enjoy. More do's and don'ts.

Meanwhile back on Facebook.

Up to this point we've covered the basics of the internet and social media. How we got from essentially randomly posting in the dark corners of the internet to moving out of the dark ages and posting our thoughts and feelings in real time to a much wider audience.

So now that you have such unlimited power at your fingertips, what do you do with it? You’ve clearly read my blog up until this point, so you are undoubtedly curious about where to go from here. You have this endless void in front of you, and the possibilities are endless.

There are many ways that social media (Facebook, Instagram, twitter) can be powerful assets. A few personal examples are meeting up with your friends because one decided to plan a party and used Facebook to invite you. The other is to see how your friend from high school has been doing.
Another is finding love, as I have done several times in the past. You can also buy and sell just about whatever you want (within reason mind you!) You can also find several employment opportunities, in short: you can do just about anything.

Yet social media isn’t the land of riches and sex partners, it has a darker side. The dark side of “the book” is a pathway to many would see as unnatural and unhealthy. Your personal social media reflects yourself. Any entry level marketing student will tell you that you should be very self-conscious about what you decide to put on the internet.

Remember that time you got really hammered and got arrested? You may think that went away, but somehow, someway, someone managed to tag you in that post and it’s stuck on the internet for the end of time. Well probably not, because sooner or later the data would be purged, but the point remains, your social media is a living record of the things you’ve done and said.

I ran a crossed a great blog for students about the do’s and don’ts of personal social media. Joanna Hughes wrote a really good article for students who aren’t really socially aware of the ramifications of social media abuse. Do's and Don't of Social Media for StudentsI’ll summarise if you’re not interested in clickbait.

1.) Try really hard to keep personal information off the internet. When I say personal, I mean where you live. That’s important if you want to keep some kind of social ambiguity from other people.

2.) Don’t post any illegal activities on the internet. I remember a pre - 9/11 world in which you could type a few choice words and believe without a degree of truth Uncle Sam wasn’t waiting to bust down my door (why he hasn’t to this day eludes me.) The point being, if you’re doing something that’s against the law (terrorism is extreme in this case but still), it’s best to keep it off social media

“Hey Bob, Jimmy’s boy is trying meth!”

3.) Don’t believe everything you read. Remember our fearless leader rambling on about “Fake News” yeah, he kind of has a point there. People will put out fake facts to skew an argument in their favour. They bank on you being ignorant and lazy.

Truth be told, I could throw a bunch of random facts your way compiled from various sources. Yet I think you got the general idea of what you should and shouldn’t do on social media. Point being, just think before you hit enter…

For the web is dark and full of terrors

When Myspace exploded onto the scene back in the early 2000’s not really many people knew what to do with it. In order to understand the time period, you must understand the mindset of the people back in those days. Many of us were growing up with technology as it was evolving, and the generation before us didn’t really have a grasp of how to use it. Remember having to explain to mom and dad how this thing called a computer worked, yeah, I do to. It was a total nightmare that only fueled the “kids these days” mentality. I recall having fights with my family about how I was spending too much time on the computer. Those who were apart of Generation X had a rough understanding of how technology worked (as they had grown up with the first computers) and had a better understanding.

Yet Myspace wasn’t the first social media website people could relate to, it was the first social media website that marketed itself correctly. Previous version of social media websites, prominently the now defunct Friendster. Friendster more or less was a prototype that never really got off the ground. Imagine a dating website that wasn’t really a dating website. Whilst Friendster was the ancestor, delving into it’s failures can be better described by Saqib Shah in his The History of Social Media. Saqib takes the time to map out the history of social media (up until 2016 when the article was written.)

Myspace single handedly destroyed its prototype rival by offering what Friendster didn’t: options. When I look back on my first Myspace page, I remember what I was able to do with it. I could post photos that I had taken, I could change my moods, I could change my top 8 friends’ around (and cause massive amounts of drama). I could blog to my heart’s content without using another platform. I could find the music from my favorite bands relatively easy. Myspace to me could do everything I wanted at the time. Yet most importantly: I had a page on the internet that was mine, and that my friends could interact with.

Myspace thrived for a solid 5 to 6 years in my opinion before the next generation platforms started to nibble away at it. It’s primary rival, and undisputed king of social platforms, Facebook, started to pop up around 2006 when it went live to the general public. I recall being in high school when I first heard about Facebook. It was being marketed towards young professionals, and those trying to escape the multicolored hell that Myspace had turned into.

Facebook took Myspace and made it simpler. Gone was the ability to change your profile into whatever color you wanted to. You were given a simple interface to do basic customizations. It was a toned-down Myspace that your friends from school were connected on. What was the major game changer, the ability to blog in real time…IE the Facebook post. You could add content in real time, and your friends could instantly judge it with “likes.” I think Bryan Rice’s article The Progression Of Social Media and How Myspace Fits in really captured why Myspace fell to Facebook.

Myspace has sadly gone the way of the Dodo. Dwindling membership with constantly reboots and technical failures…I doubt it’ll be long before they throw in the towel.

A brave new world

First impressions are always the most important, and social media is an important topic to me. I grew up before social media really came into its own, and that unique chance to watch the world evolve and become far more connected than ever thought possible has been interesting and challenging none the less.

There have been a great many new revelations regarding the ever-changing world of social media. Since the dawn of the internet, many of us have had the distinct privilege to watch the internet evolve from a simple script, to the interactive experiences we see today. Like the ever-evolving human race, our online personas have also had to evolve with the times.

Back in the long-long ago, say about the late 90’s, you could practically do and say whatever you wanted on the internet and get away with it. There were no profiles with your name and face attached to them. AOL chatroom's and AOL instant Messenger (AIM) were the preferred weapon of choice. Yahoo online forums, and your generic run of the mill message board. Your boss had no clue who was bad mouthing him, and you could change your online name at will.

Then Myspace came along, and the rules of the web changed for all of us. Why was Myspace so ground breaking in the greater scheme of the internet? How did Myspace break through the white noise and become so successful? The answer for that question is simple, it was user friendly to a degree never thought possible.

Seemingly over night the names and faces were connected, people knew who you were, what you liked, what you wanted to like, and how you behaved towards others. Most of us had absolutely zero clue as to how this would affect us in the long run. Myspace found a way to make the internet personal, and seemingly rewrote the book of human interaction.  Now people could see everything you did...

In the old days, you could tell someone off and they wouldn’t know who you were, now with Myspace you could “run your mouth” and have it catch up to you in the real world. Your friends would start to judge you for your online behavior, potential employers would run a Myspace search and find out who you really were. In short, Myspace opened a door that could never be closed ever again. You were out and exposed on the internet, and if you chose to not participate you were left out. Rand Fishkin back in 2006 wrote a fantastic article on why Myspace was so popular, I’d advise you all to check out his unique point of view.  A simple explanation as to why Myspace was so popular...

Myspace grabbed a hold of the internet and lumped it into one basic user-friendly interface. On Myspace you could tailor your online profile, you could learn basic HTML and set your profile up however you wanted. You could add music to your Myspace page, you could write page long rants about your current drama in your life, you could also show the world who you’re top 8 friends were.

At it’s height Myspace had over 61+ million users, and those 61 million users were all connected and watching and judging one another. I personally think Robin Swire provided a good indepth look into how Myspace changed the game. How Myspace influenced social networking

The world had no concept of the terms “cyber bullying” or “social media” or “Online presence.” Did anyone have an idea on what a selfie was? Myspace was the opening act for what would become the greatest digital revolution since the e-mail.

Tomorrow I will take a deeper look into how Myspace changed the world as we knew it, and how its successors followed the model and improved upon it. Later I will discuss your personal online presence and finally your professional online presence.