There’s a lot of great relationships to be made via social media. I’ve met people from all over the world who I can talk to at any time and have great conversations with. It’s always possible that I could potentially do work with some of them, and I’ve hired people from other countries here and there to handle some of the small things with either a website or blog that I wasn’t in the mood to do or didn’t have the time for.
As with anything in this world, there’s a whole lot of mean people also. Sometimes, the mean people are actually pretty nice most of the time, and then suddenly out of nowhere they look like they’ve just lost their minds for one reason or another. Continue reading There’s A Lot Of “Mean” On Social Media→
Back in 2008 I joined Twitter. I wasn’t sure what it was all about, but back then I experimented a lot with things so I could write about them here. After about a month I wasn’t sure I was a fan of the platform, but but a couple of months later I started seeing its appeal.
The year 2008 was a very intriguing year for America. That’s the year Barack Obama was running for president against John McCain, and though I really wasn’t overly interested initially (which would have shocked me 10 years earlier), I knew early who I’d be voting for. Continue reading Sorry, But I Remember Your Unethical Behavior→
I’ve been in rant mode for the past couple of days after reading the story I’m linking to. The basics are that 5 teens between the ages of 14 and 16 not only watched a man die by drowning, and not only egged him on and made fun of him while it was happening, but shot video of it from their phones and then posted it online.
You read that correctly. They posted the video on YouTube, and not a single one of them thought it was important enough to call 911 or try to help the man to safety. Even if it’s possible that he was trying to commit suicide, I can’t imagine standing around laughing at someone trying to kill themselves even if that was the case. Continue reading Is Social Media Causing Our Children To Lose Their Compassion?→
I sometimes don’t understand people. At the beginning of this month I wrote a post and added a video asking the question what’s wrong with being nice. I went at that question in a different way than what I’m going to talk about today, and yet it’s as pertinent to this topic as any other.
Back in December I wrote a post saying how much I loved Instagram, now that it can be accessed through Android. I still love Instagram. What I find is that I don’t necessarily like all the people there.
I love the people following me; thank you to anyone following me there. For anyone who’s not connected with me there I’m mitch9359. I love seeing your pictures and I hope you don’t get tired of looking at all the food pictures I put up.
Occasionally I like to take a quick look at an attractive lady or two; hey, I’m a guy. There’s the page that gives you 15 random photos, and occasionally I take a look. It’s amazing how many likes those pictures get… okay, I guess it’s not so amazing after all. What’s amazing are some of the comments.
I don’t know when it became a legitimate thing to decide that just because someone put a picture of themselves somewhere looking nice that you, some pig, has the right to say what you want to do to that person; you know what’s being said. Or talking about someone’s anatomy as if you know this person and thus have privileges that no one else does. How tasteless and childish can people be?
You know what stupid people? Your name gets highlighted, thus anyone can follow you back to see who you are or what images you’ve put up. I’ve gone this a few times and I have to admit that I’m amazed. It’s not all young punks writing this junk. One was obviously a devout Muslim because all the pictures on his site were Islamic religious icons, and any male was wearing the traditional headdress. So, you’re telling the world that you could care less about your religion because you can demean women anytime you want to, or are you saying that a pretty woman doesn’t matter to you because, since she’s sharing her body, she’s not chaste in your world and thus it doesn’t count?
I saw many other people who were saying the same sorts of things, and yet when you went to their page they made it seem like they were relatively nice people, putting up images that no one would ever think to object to. I really thought for a couple of moments about saying something on some of these pages, but decided I didn’t want to go there.
The same thing happens on YouTube. Stupid idiots will make comments and say all this trash and filth, yet when you visit their pages, for the most part they’re pretty straight. A few of them are as trashy and nasty on their own page, in which case you know there’s nothing much you can do about them. Well, that’s not quite true.
On YouTube, if you care, you can delete comments you don’t like. Not that I get many comments but if some came in with language I didn’t support I’d just up and delete it. On Instagram, you can’t delete comments; at least I haven’t been able to figure out how you can do it if you wanted to. It’s possible you can go online and do it, but I’m just not sure. However, if an image has more than a thousand comments, who wants to go back and read any of that garbage?
I’ve been writing a lot this month about behavior, mostly bad behavior, and maybe it’s a good thing this month is ending. I keep asking is that what we’ve become, and is this really the future of this country and the world, people deciding that no one else’s feelings or sensitivities matter? Let me know. In the meantime I’ve embedded a video from our Hot Blog Tips Hangout on the topic of negative feedback, which I led, that talks a bit more about this same thing:
I just left a post on another blog. The blog required me to register first, then it sent me a password so I could fully register and add any pertinent information I wished to. It’s a WordPress blog, so I’m familiar with it.
Thing is, the blog has been in existence for almost 18 months, and there’s never been a comment. I would pretty much figure it’s because the blog owner makes one have to register first. I usually don’t register for blogs, but in this case I made an exception. I don’t usually like doing it for three reasons. One, it takes time away from my commenting; when I want to comment, I want to comment now, while I’m thinking about it. Two, it gives the blog owner a feeling that they can start sending me all sorts of email that I don’t want or need; I’ll visit the blog and possibly read or buy stuff when I want to. And three, you can’t unregister; I tried on this one blog and finally just fudged an email address, because the writer was inundating me needlessly with updates, then updates on the updates; enough already.
There are other blogs I’ve left messages on, only to receive an email asking me to click on it to prove that it’s me. It’s easy enough to do, but it leaves me wondering if I want to continue dealing with it long term; I’d rather you just read the comment and determine if you want it on your site or not. A couple of times my entry has never shown up on one of those sites anyway, which left me feeling like I wasted my time. And, if I feel like I’m wasting my time, you’re probably not going to get any love back in the form of links or even being added to the blogroll some day.
I never had it set up that people needed to register for my site (though some do anyway), but I realized fairly early on that I was going to have to add something to stop as much spam as was coming through. I first loaded Botcheck, which took care of a lot of stuff but not nearly enough. I then loaded Bad Behavior, but the same was occurring. Finally I added Akismet, which is supreme, and it catches virtually everything. On my business blog, I added a plugin that makes people put in a randomly generated number. I haven’t had to go that far with this one, as Askimet seems to be doing a great job on its own.
The main idea of your blog is to encourage others to comment; at least that’s usually the intention. You share your ideas, and you hope others will either validate your thoughts or offer something new. If you’re just writing for yourself, then that’s something entirely different; enjoy that. Some folks don’t have comments open at all; their choice. But if you’re going to do it, make it easy.
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