A Freshman's Point of View on the Internet
Online, I appear to be a lesbian and it appears that I am in a relationship with someone. It also seems that I like to cook and I like to eat. I’m a fan of football, I’m a caring person and I like to joke. I love younger children, I love how they think, who they are as people, their imagination, personality and the way they grow. Another thing you can learn about me on the internet is that i’m somewhat a family person, I’m peaceful and I love my nephew dearly.
I think people would perceive me as being a cook, someone who cooks often or likes to. The thought isn’t all the way wrong, I like to cook but i’m not crazy about it. However, I do enjoy eating and I certainly am crazy about that. They could perceive me as wanting to have a child someday because I re-post a lot of newborn babies and most times my captions for those post are “one day” or similar to that. People could perceive me as being really close to my relatives, one or two people in my family I am very close to, one of those people being my father because on a daily basis I post about him and how great of a person he is.
Before I post anything on line, I greatly consider my future. I always think about how will this picture or this post effect my name or will it get me in any kind of trouble. Then I think about my family and how they’d feel towards my post and how would people look at them for something I did. Then I consider people I interact with over the internet, who can see me, whose feelings I could hurt, and will this damage any opportunity I’ve been offered or would have been offered. Lastly I consider how would I feel if this was me. If I seen whatever i’m posting on another person’s social media, how might I have felt towards it.
My pros and cons of sharing online are:
Pros: I can express myself the way I want to express myself, I can post as many pictures as I want and remove them. I can let out my thoughts, I can agree and disagree on what people feel and are saying. I’m able to use my own mind, I don’t have to allow anyone access to my page and I can friend and unfriend anyone, then block them as well.
Cons: You can remove the picture from your view and maybe a few others but once it’s on the internet. You’re always going to see something you don’t like, you can count on the internet to throw something negative into your view. Someone is always going to be on the other end “hating on you”. There’s always someone out there ready to ruin your day or sprinkle their miserableness onto your post or turn something you said into something completely opposite. You have to choose your words very wisely and think about what you’re saying. I also feel that people overtime have started to compete with each other over the internet mentally, thoughts like “how can I look better than her, how could get a boy like him to notice me or a girl like her, how can I be prettier, how can I wear the clothes she’s wearing, where could I find his shoes, I wish I had his or her piercing” and this list goes on. People are falling out of touch with who they are mentally, alone in a room with yourself. I know this because I am victim to it and/or I too have committed this crime and I think that it’s very unhealthy.
Lack of control, Permanence and Immediacy have an impact on our lives because when you have lack of control it means you don’t know how to discipline yourself or tell yourself no. That could result into bad things over and over again, you basically never learn your lesson. Another way of explaining Lack of control is not being in control of your post, for example the lady posted a picture of her daughter and the picture became out of her control, people started to make fun of her sick child. With permanence I think it’s a little dangerous that you’re on the internet forever once you put yourself up there because the days get crazier and crazier by the minute. Now and days with the new screenshot devices anyone can have your picture in their phone, people are sick and people are insane. Somewhere right now, any of us could be hanging up on someone’s wall, they could have save the picture got us blown up, made us into a poster more than once with more than one picture for multiple reasons, might be plotting to snatch us, to meet us, to be apart of our lives, could be a mental serial killer, honestly the possibilities are endless. As far as immediacy goes, I think people like not having to wait forever for a picture or post to load, to be posted or for them to be able to click on a video and watch it. Immediacy with me, i’m pretty cautious about it because if I was to do something illegal, just as immediate it is for me to pull up something, it’ll be immediate for a police officer to pull up my profile and find my full information and more.
My thoughts on social media background checks by potential employers varies on the company, If it’s someone like the government I absolutely think you should look into their life and check their social media to know how trustworthy they are, get a glimpse on who they are as people. Find out what they have going for them and get an insight on how they feel about certain things. I think it’s very important to do that kind of snooping around on a potential state worker. A place like McDonald's I however don’t agree is necessary to have to background check them. I think it’s their personal life. All their doing is taking orders and making a quick burger but it also depends on the person, in this economy you never know who is who and that makes it really hard to trust people.
Free speech is having permission to say anything you want whether it’s how you're feeling, your opinion or your unneeded comments. Free speech is having the privilege to share your ideas, thoughts and epiphanies with others, good or bad with no consequence. Some things that are protected is your personal information, information like your birthday, your age, your house address, your private messages, not a lot of things are really protected securely, it really depends on the website. One piece of information that is very protected is your social security number. Your social security number is very protected because someone could steal your identity and basically own your life, they can live under your name, say your children are theirs, your car is theirs, and the list goes on. A few things that aren’t protected are things like your pictures, your name, your phone number but again it depends on the website.
An internet troll is someone that spreads their negative energy over the internet, they’re internet users who comment disrespectful comments, tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, they’re people who start arguments with you, they are upsetting people. Their post are rude, foul and hurtful.
The goal of an internet troll is to definitely hurt your feelings and to make you feel bad, upset you. Their job is to make you feel wrong about what you think and who you are as a person.
A way we can stop trolling is by unfriending the person, blocking them or reporting them to the website owners and reviewers that check stuff like inappropriate post or spammers and it’s a possibility that they could delete their account.
The pros and cons of posting anonymously are:
Pros: Nobody knows who you are evidently because you're anonymous. You don’t have to worry about anyone pointing fingers at you because they have no idea who you are.
Cons: Some cons could be if you said something really good on a really important website, somebody important might be looking for you and then can’t find you but, I think that if it’s really important an authority or someone like that can track you and find out who you are. Another con would be what you don’t know who anyone else is. Just as you’re anonymous everyone else would be too so you don’t know who's reading what you're posting, who’s viewing you etc.
My top three tips to anyone who utilizes Social Media would have to be, Don’t share your personal business with anyone not even your family. Not through a comment, a direct message, or in code text. If you feel the need to tell someone something it’s always better to wait until you see them. That way good or bad there’s no evidence, no proof and no one can track you down or find out about anything like that. I know that direct messages may be private from the public eye sure but not from the owner of those websites so you really have to watch what you do on the internet. Another word of advice is take time to think about what you’re posting, who you're sharing it with, what you’re posting it too, does it need to be seen and does it need to be known and I think you should always think about will this hurt someone else’s feelings, to me, it’s like a principal. You don’t want to post anything that will follow you forever or that you’d mind following you forever, that you wouldn’t want to be there later down the line in your future because everyone knows the golden rule of the internet is Once is up there, it’s up there forever and that there’s no such thing as a delete button. My last rule is to overall be careful, technology is very rigged today and this world is crazy. I’d say treat the internet like your outside world, would you walk outside with no clothes on or under dress then don’t do it on the internet, I personally think it’s self disrespect but some people are different and enjoy being nudist, just an example. If you wouldn’t talk to strangers on the street then when a random person messages you on the internet I don’t think you should reply no matter what because if it’s important that person will find their way to you, maybe they’ll know your parent. Watch your surroundings, watch what you say and do because you never know who’s watching, as my English teacher Ms. Bentum said “We are always on stage.”
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