Social media faux pas
I am extremely grateful to have had the chance to grow up without social media. There was no indication on how many Instagram photos to like in one go, or how far back one should or should not scroll. Actually, there were no Instagram and no scrolling at all, and it would have been rude not to flick through the whole photo album when handed to you. The worst that could have happened, technologically speaking, was to send a text message to the wrong person because you didn’t select ‘reply’ but winged it and pressed down one too many times in your contact list.
Youngsters be like ‘pressed down on your contact list? What is she on about?’
I am talking about the generation of people with an embarrassing email address, who willingly chose to ignore grammar rules to squeeze as many words as possible in 160 characters. We are the generation that could type an entire SMS underneath our school desks without looking because we knew the letters on those number keys by heart. There was no such thing as an autocorrect mistake.
All is fair in war and texting.
The downside of growing up without the kind of social media obsession we’re experiencing nowadays, are the unspoken social rules that everyone seems to know and respect, whereas I had no idea they existed.
I’ve recently learned that liking a photo that’s ‘old’ on someone’s Instagram is an unforgivable social faux pas. See, that never happened on Myspace, where the number of photos you could upload was so little, you ended up ranking your friends according to your aesthetics. Who needs to take a photo of yourself at a concert when you could have cool bands as top three friends?
That, my friends, was economy.
Also, I’ve recently had to face the aftermath of one of these unheard of ‘social media rules’ myself. What happened was: I was on Linkedin...
Bbefore you start saying how anything bad could happen on Linkedin since barely anything at all happens there anyway, let me say you are absolutely right.
Anyway, I was on Linkedin when I noticed a notification for a friend request or something, so I tap on the icon and addded this guy who I sort of heard mentioned from work, it seemed a sudden friend request but not too improbable.
I know some of you already know where this is going.
It wasn’t a friend request. It was, as a matter of fact, a ‘people you may know’ highlight.
What do you do in this case? It’s too late to cancel it and too weird to message on Linkedin, because everything sounds suggested. So as the adulting creature I am, I decided to be mature and responsible and blatantly ignore what happened. For all he knows, I could be one of those people that do networking on Linkedin. The fact that we would have only two connections in common is irrelevant. Maybe he doesn’t even use Linkedin that often and doesn’t receive notifications from the app.
The mis-add happened a month ago and I was starting to think I got away with it, but yesterday I walked into his department looking for someone and bumped into him. I didn’t have time to introduce myself as he immediately remembered me from the random connection on Linkedin.
Because I am mature and responsible and very good at improv, I started digging in the exact spot I was standing on, hoping to reach Hawaii by midnight.
Image: via
Youngsters be like ‘pressed down on your contact list? What is she on about?’
I am talking about the generation of people with an embarrassing email address, who willingly chose to ignore grammar rules to squeeze as many words as possible in 160 characters. We are the generation that could type an entire SMS underneath our school desks without looking because we knew the letters on those number keys by heart. There was no such thing as an autocorrect mistake.
All is fair in war and texting.
The downside of growing up without the kind of social media obsession we’re experiencing nowadays, are the unspoken social rules that everyone seems to know and respect, whereas I had no idea they existed.
I’ve recently learned that liking a photo that’s ‘old’ on someone’s Instagram is an unforgivable social faux pas. See, that never happened on Myspace, where the number of photos you could upload was so little, you ended up ranking your friends according to your aesthetics. Who needs to take a photo of yourself at a concert when you could have cool bands as top three friends?
That, my friends, was economy.
Also, I’ve recently had to face the aftermath of one of these unheard of ‘social media rules’ myself. What happened was: I was on Linkedin...
Bbefore you start saying how anything bad could happen on Linkedin since barely anything at all happens there anyway, let me say you are absolutely right.
Anyway, I was on Linkedin when I noticed a notification for a friend request or something, so I tap on the icon and addded this guy who I sort of heard mentioned from work, it seemed a sudden friend request but not too improbable.
I know some of you already know where this is going.
It wasn’t a friend request. It was, as a matter of fact, a ‘people you may know’ highlight.
What do you do in this case? It’s too late to cancel it and too weird to message on Linkedin, because everything sounds suggested. So as the adulting creature I am, I decided to be mature and responsible and blatantly ignore what happened. For all he knows, I could be one of those people that do networking on Linkedin. The fact that we would have only two connections in common is irrelevant. Maybe he doesn’t even use Linkedin that often and doesn’t receive notifications from the app.
The mis-add happened a month ago and I was starting to think I got away with it, but yesterday I walked into his department looking for someone and bumped into him. I didn’t have time to introduce myself as he immediately remembered me from the random connection on Linkedin.
Because I am mature and responsible and very good at improv, I started digging in the exact spot I was standing on, hoping to reach Hawaii by midnight.
Image: via
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