Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts

Death to humility?

Hello 2015 and hello all :) *waves*

The posts have been slow in coming thanks to a drain on the mojo (hello work “motivation”) and a dearth of visitors in the sandbox. Talk about being a social butterfly! The usual year-end blooper post will have to come later, this time I’m building up to an observation.

Case in point: With so much self-promotion, self-declaration and whatnot perpetuated social media, are we all losing our sense of grace? Are we killing humility (like poor ol' Smoochy) in the effort to trumpet our successes at every turn?

No matter where you turn, Jimmy is telling you about his great life, Sally is showing off her new body or Sammy is showing you just how wonderful a person he is. Even our bosses are hopping onto the bandwagon "if you don't keep trumpeting your successes, who will know what you've done?".. uh how about you? The person we report to? Or are you too busy claiming credit instead? ;) Celebrating accomplishments is one thing, going overboard and shouting from the rooftops about how great you are, how without you, the office will never be able to function and how wonderful your life is, is sickening. Enough already!

This raises another issue. Because everyone is so bloody busy, would anyone take notice of your accomplishments? Is that why you have to constantly promote and market ourselves just to be seen or even heard? 

While I believe that technology and social media are great, they are oftimes the source of countless problems. If we all took the chance to unplug ourselves from our phones, computers and devices, we could actually get somewhere. Firstly, we would stop envying everyone else. 

We will start appreciating the little things again, being kind, learning to be socially adept with people and to actually see people for who they are. It’s true that we can’t help bragging from time to time but let’s tone it down, ok? If we all took a step back and dialed things down, we will star becoming ourselves again, instead of succumbing to what everyone says, or thinks… or even worse, what some reality star opines. 

Maybe I am just a cynic but I feel that you aren't truly great unless your accomplishments are given third-party validation. And by that, I don’t mean being validated by one of your personas. I mean being genuinely praised and recognized for a job well-done. The days of sincere compliments are few and far between. In the rush to be seen as being ‘great” we often praise false idols while neglecting true heroes. 

I don’t know what the world is coming or how people will continue to behave but I can say one thing. We need to stop trying to be “great” because



Are you really sure no one is reading your profile?



Dear readers,

Let me set the record straight.

If you have a social media account of any sort, whether it’s Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, a blog or Google+ or some form of network that allows you to stay in touch, stalk and/or communicate with people - your life is public. 

Regardless of how many privacy controls you’ve set or what you think you have locked away, more often than not, someone, somewhere would have heard of you or known you. They or a mutual friend would be able to access pictures of your drunk-arsed self, heard about your various shenanigans, checked out the people that you hang out with, read your self-absorbed status updates, seen you go from being single, to in a relationship, to married or are currently available or read your bitchy comments about clients or people in general. You may think that you are cool, but at the end of the day, random people will end up knowing a heck lot more about you than you could possibly imagine.

So what is the deal with social media then? It’s pretty simple, really. Either you learn how to use it wisely or you don’t use it at all.

Today, the misuse of social media is one of the leading concerns that people have. More and more people are getting fired, sued, divorced and jailed because of it. Just look at Wikileaks, ask your friends or simply read the thousands of articles online about people who abuse social media platforms who thought that no one reads their materials. How many times have you heard the phrase: ‘my boss will never read that?’ The claim that what you post on your profile is private and is only your view no longer holds true. Whether you like it or not, potential employers, recruiters, customers, new boyfriends/girlfriends, friends, the media etc are using social media channels to learn as much as they can about you.

Everyone is guilty of using social media to their advantage. Therefore, why not use it wisely or responsibly?

You don’t have to be a drone to create an interesting profile that plays to your strengths. Instead of posting inane updates, think about what you are posting. And who will be seeing it. Do you really want members of your family to know that you had a wild night with the boys? Sure you can un-tag those photos but can you control anyone else from putting them online in the first place? How does it reflect on you? Will this be good or bad for your public profile? Don’t just check-in at every place you go to. How about highlighting the interesting aspects of the places that you are visiting instead?

It’s not difficult to maintain your public profile if you are smart about it. I’m sure that you have a thousand different opinions and thoughts but at the same time, it’s good to step back once in a while, to check that you don’t go overboard. Sharing is one thing, showing everyone that you are a self-absorbed fool is another thing entirely.  The onus is entirely on you to show people who you are.

After all, some one is reading it.

Online, offline, sidelined?

Pop quiz: How many of you still read the traditional newspapers and think that it is the be-all and end-all for news reporting?

Sure, we all started out reading the newspapers and watching the news but how many of us can now say that these are the only things that we read? The Internet has become so evolved now with apps, social media networks, news portals and blogs that information is simply overwhelming. For someone working in the media, it can become really crazy.

What I really love about being online and social networking is that it presents you with more than one way of reaching out to people. Be it Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook or MySpace, there is definitely some other way  of reaching out to your target audience apart from email, the phone and uh fax. The key lies in how you develop your messages to target the right audiences. If it is reaching out to friends, you can personalize almost anything. Marketing-wise, it all looks easy, putting up a page of Facebook but what do you want people to do about it? How do you get them to care for a cause that you are passionate about? How do you get a reaction? Sure, you can go down the controversial route but is that really how you want to market yourself?

But there is one group of people that seem to be harder to reach. These are what I like to call the Internet Rebels. People who think 'why should I read more than what is reported in the papers'? People who refuse to get in any of the social networks or access more information from different sites, 'because everyone else is on it'. To these people, I say, WAKE UP! The world is moving along without you. It's ok to stay in your archaic ways. I'm just saying that reaching out to people or even reading news off different sites is just another way of communicating and not the only way of communicating. 

But what is so wrong, really? Social networking is a great option for the non-communicators. Those who can't be bothered about the world or anything, except for themselves. Let me tell you, it's a fantastic way of spying on people without getting yourself involved in human emotions or any sort of nonsense. You can look into people's lives without caring what they think about you. You can find out what is wrong with them without asking them! What is there not to like? All you have to do is put your most basic information online, so that although it is you, you can still remain somewhat mysterious. Bonus!

I'm glad that my mother and most of my family members are savvy enough to use their social media accounts to stay in touch with friends and family. It's amazing the amount of gossip you can get from people all over the world. Haha. I personally love it and use it frequently for work and personal purposes. I find that it makes my job a lot easier to be in the know about a whole lot of things at once.

At the end of the day is not whether you use online tools or not. It is about how you use it and how you make it effective to you. Don't you agree?

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Ever prodded a sleeping dragon, only to have it whip up and bite you in the ass? Well, neither have I. But I advocate that you should try everything...once ;P

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