Pause Before You Post

I love pictures. It’s what makes me favour facebook over twitter. Pictures of your pets, stuff you cooked, stuff you built… even selfies of you lazing on the sofa with a hangover. Post them all I say! But maybe you should pause a moment before launching photos of your loved ones into the ‘like it, share it’ universe.

I remember my mother insisting that the entire set of 24 pictures she had paid to have developed had to be added to the family album, including those that prominently featured her thumb and those where I had bright red eyes or no eyes at all (I was notorious for blinking as soon as the flash went off). Every time she dragged them out, I died a little bit inside, cringing as she showed visitors the “great shots” of our family vacation, including several of me in my first bikini, or the Christmas morning collection, in which I had bed head and was sporting reindeer motif pajamas. I cannot imagine how exponentially worse it would have been to see my pimply, teenaged face on a computer screen, accompanied by a message reading “Isn’t she beautiful?” and a series of comments in which other mothers lament how “all grown up” I look. Arrgghh!

PICTURES OF YOU… POST! PICTURES OF YOUR KIDS, YOUR SPOUSE, YOUR DEAREST FRIENDS… ASK PERMISSION FIRST AND IF THEY SEEM UNCOMFORTABLE, SKIP IT.

I love games. Words with Friends and Candy Crush and Logo Quiz – got ‘em all and have to say that they have made long waits in doctor’s offices considerably less boring! Always looking for a new, fun thing to do with my 5-10 minutes of daily spare time, so if you have just found a new app that is going to entertain me, post it! Tell me all about it. Add a link so I can get to it as quickly as possible. Then stop. Do not repeatedly invite me to beat your score, even if clicking ‘share’ gets you some extra thingie that allows you to stay alive in the game for thirty more seconds, because these are not posts, they are advertisements. And it’s annoying to be spammed by friends.

RECOMMENDATIONS ABOUT GREAT NEW APPS… POST! YOUR HIGHEST LEVEL, YOUR DAILY BEST, AND CHALLENGES TO TRY AND BEAT YOUR SCORES… SKIP IT!

And while I am on the subject of recommendations… If you have just been to the movies and feel that it was (a) a waste of your precious life moments, (b) a mind altering experience that has made you a better person, or (c) mildly entertaining and worth the cost of purchasing the world’s most expensive popcorn, please post your opinion. And it can be helpful to include important facts, like if Ryan Gosling removed his shirt (an obvious good thing) or if the female lead assumed an accent of some sort (a potential turn off). But before you hit ‘post’ could you take a moment to read what http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/ready-set-done-7/you have written and make sure that you are not sharing the entire plotline, including the surprise ending? And no… it is not acceptable to precede the sentence in which you ruin the entire movie for me with the words “spoiler alert” and a sad face emoticon!

MOVIE REVIEWS… POST! A PLOT SUMMARY COMPLETE WITH FINAL SCENE SYNOPSIS… SKIP IT!

I love my facebook friends. So many people have moved away over the years and facebook makes it feel like they are a little bit closer. And there are folks that I bump into everyday but still don’t get time to really talk to, so it’s nice to hear about their recent vacation, or their kitchen reno, or just laugh at a picture of their dog in a Halloween costume. I am a loyal facebook friend and no one will be “unfriended” because they posted a group shot in which I look like I might be picking my nose, or sent me 10 invitations to best their Candy Crush score in only one day, or spoiled the ending to the new Hunger Games movie (all of these things have actually happened!).

And I hope no one will “unfriend” me for telling the world how many glasses of wine we all had at the last Social Club meeting (because what happens in Social Club should stay in Social Club) or for blatantly promoting my blog with links to every new article (visit us at http://stuffmydogtaughtme.com). Or for my occasional feminist rants against school dress codes (because they make my head explode in rage and so I must vent!).

Let us not judge each other, I say. And so it is without judgement that I recommend we all pause for just a second before hitting ‘post’ and perhaps, on occasion, we make the decision to just skip it. And remember… if you really need to make a post, you can always put up a Maxine cartoon because those things are hilarious!

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