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Apr 18 2009

The Online Sea of Sharks

Published by kingdevon at 3:18 pm under Uncategorized Edit This

People have often asked me why I don’t have a Twitter account. Despite the fact that I’ve had no need to create one (unlike my need for facebook, which sprung up during college when I was too cheap to buy books), there are also some remarkably un-compelling reasons such as how tech-savvy the rest of the world has become.

It’s no secret that the technological revolution has long since been upon us. What many people often struggle with is the idea that anyone and EVERYONE can be listening to what you have to say. It’s much like the bottleneck effect when listening to conversations in a crowded room. You could say something embarassing out loud and nobody might hear it, or through the din, you could say something semi-privately and through some perverse stroke of bad luck, it may fall solely on the wrong person’s ears.

It’s because of this that I secretly suspect that I don’t have a well-paying job. Not that I’m tempting fate by criticizing the fact that I am fortunate enough to work two different low-paying jobs to support my self and occasionally treat myself to Taco Bell, but my resume isn’t exactly lacking. I have six different blogs, which represent thoughtful and eccentric deviations of my various writer’s personalities. I think the 30+ companies I applied to may have stumbled across one or two of my little wells of online knowledge and deemed their own companies perfectly fine without another employee who needs mental counseling.

And then there are the kinds of people who use the internet as a means to exact acts of cruelty. It’s easy to hide behind a modem and leave hurtful or racist comments on youtube, it’s another step in the wrong direction when people create fake profiles on MySpace which ultimately cause a 13-year-old girl to kill herself.

In our generation, it’s seeming more and more like everything we shout from the mountaintops has some degree of reprecussion. I don’t really need to add to that through my own narcissism. Even at my Alma Mater, people involved with riots and inappropriate behavior were intelligently using facebook and youtube to show everyone how rowdy they could be. Surprisingly enough, this was the first place that state police looked in order to level legal charges.

Be careful. The people you care about will listen to how your day went, or what you think of other people or employers–but it’s not necessarilly a public matter.

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One Response to “The Online Sea of Sharks”

  1. MCon 18 Apr 2009 at 4:53 pm edit this

    okay, but you didn’t answer my question! Is Twitter like selling your soul to the devil? And should I not do it?

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