Note: Here’s a blog post I wrote about nine years ago. With everything that is going on with Facebook, I thought it was important to bring it to the top again.
It seems like everyday I hear about someone getting fired for something they said or posted on Facebook, YouTube, or some other social media. I also read stories about people who have been destroyed because someone else posted something mean or embarrassing about them; even to the point of killing themselves. It amazes me that these people either don’t care about the consequences of what they are posting, or simply don’t think anyone will notice.
On Facebook I’ve seen pictures of people smoking pot, lewd gestures, and all of the seven dirty words, including every variation thereof. I’ve also witnessed someone being “outed” by a “friend” on Facebook. Today, I read about four reporters in Little Rock who were fired from their jobs for posting some funny videos on YouTube about how much they hate their jobs. What were they thinking? I really doubt that all four of them really wanted to get fired.
As a teacher, I tell my students not to post anything that will make an employer judge them in a negative way, or that they wouldn’t want their mother to see on the front page of a newspaper. And, for God’s Sake, make sure you spell everything right! It bugs me (just a tad) that in every picture on one of my niece’s Facebook she is making a funny face and signing “I love you” with her hands. Not that there is anything wrong with signing “I love you,” but does she have to do it in every picture?
I’m not sure what the psychology is behind these overt acts of negative social expression. What I do know is that someday, someplace, this information will somehow come back to haunt them.
Which is one reason why I am excited to see Columbia Pictures’ new movie The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, due out this October. From the trailer, it appears to be about how FaceBook was conceived by a couple of Harvard students, Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. The music is by Nine Inch Nails, which is very fitting since they were one of the bands who experimented early with social media and have successfully implemented all aspects of it to counteract the loss of revenue from peer-to-peer filing sharing of their music.
Until the next time…