Is internet really an outlet for us to express our feelings?
With all these new networking sites, we should have even more opportunities to exercise our freedom of speech. But is it really true?
Let's take FaceBook for example.
How many times have you 'Ignored' or limit your profile to certain people, like say; your colleagues, boss, classmates or family?
Maybe not profile but more of posts and photos?
I know I did.
This subject has been nagging me for quite some time and yesterday, I felt like blogging again 'cos of this.
I guess I should clarify, I'm a supporter of these networking sites. I used to use Twitter but currently I've stopped and is mainly on FaceBook(duh), Tumblr and, of course, Blogger. The main reason why I stopped using Twitter was that I did not want people to know every little action I did or where to find me. I used to be a fervent updater of statuses on FaceBook along with Twitter but over the past year, I've gradually stopped. (Tadaa! That explains the lack of updates about me! Mysteryyyy~~~)
So, what sparked off this post?
Well, I had a rather heated debate recently and seeing how bad my temper still is, I needed a place to vent and after going through the list of places I could, I realise, DANG IT! I can't post it on FaceBook or the person I'm 'bitching' about will see it and it's gonna be awkward whenever we see each other, much less work together. Even if I use 'secret coding' for my posts, people might put 2 and 2 together and spread it to them and that gets EVEN more awkward.
I used to have the notion that as long as you're right, you are free to say whatever you want. Express your feelings! Ignore the rest!
Maybe I'm not all that experienced in life, but after peeping into the working world and all, I realise that that is not a way for survival. Sometimes, you gotta keep peace for the sake of family, friends and yourself. It never hurts to have more bridges. 'Destroying' relationships might be harmful, you never know when you might meet that person's help.
Superficial, materialistic but isn't that true? Isn't that what we do best? Otherwise, why would we put on countless masks when interacting with others.
Alright, seems like I've digressed a little. Back to FaceBook.
So if we do not wish for certain people to see our posts, it would seem simple to just delete them. Save us all the trouble! But nowadays, the 'Friend' status on FaceBook seems to be akin to a friend status in real life. Deleting them off on FaceBook would be indirectly saying, "I do not wish to have you as my friend, not just in FaceBook but in my life too." Andddddd, that will just cause awkwardness and resentment.
Especially for the workplace! What do you do when your colleagues or even worse, your supervisors, add you on FaceBook or started following you on Twitter? Accept their friend request(Hey, they want to be friends with you!) or ignore them? Sometimes, I'm hesitant to accept colleagues on FaceBook as I do not want them to know what I do on my own free time. And I certainly do not really want to know whether my boss enjoys his date at the beach or so. Seems kinda of disturbing. I mean.
But if your boss looks anything like this, then it's a different story!
And if you are upset at some stuff at work, you can't really rant about it on your posts. Can you imagine your boss 'Liking' your post about how horrible your colleague is? -AWKWARD-
Also! Whatever you post online, be it blogposts, twitter updates or FaceBook posts, you might forget about what the content is after a few months, but the internet NEVER forgets! People can always backtrack to your history, especially with the new FaceBook Timeline. =.=
There, I've given most of the bad points about the lack of freedom of speech online. Of course there are good things about networking sites. I've killed off countless of hours laughing on Tumblr, reading blogs and writing personal blog entries. All I'm saying is that, before we can churn out a ranting post, think. Think about the consquences that will befall upon you or others. Your posts normally reflect who you are or more likely, people's perceptions of you as a person. If you tend to have lots of discriminating posts, well, what do you think that says about you? As your internet networking grows, your freedom of speech will start of shrink.
'With great power comes great responsibilty.'
Alright, that was lame. Hahahahaha!
Maybe this post is irrelevant to you because you are all that open and stuff, but well, this post is relevant to me and how I see stuff now! So if you disagree, so be it. I'm not forcing my ideas on you!
1st post of 2012 and after 6 months. Seems kinda of heavy. Oh well, anyway, here's wishing you people a belated MERRY CHINESE NEW YEAR!
With all these new networking sites, we should have even more opportunities to exercise our freedom of speech. But is it really true?
Let's take FaceBook for example.
How many times have you 'Ignored' or limit your profile to certain people, like say; your colleagues, boss, classmates or family?
Maybe not profile but more of posts and photos?
I know I did.
This subject has been nagging me for quite some time and yesterday, I felt like blogging again 'cos of this.
I guess I should clarify, I'm a supporter of these networking sites. I used to use Twitter but currently I've stopped and is mainly on FaceBook(duh), Tumblr and, of course, Blogger. The main reason why I stopped using Twitter was that I did not want people to know every little action I did or where to find me. I used to be a fervent updater of statuses on FaceBook along with Twitter but over the past year, I've gradually stopped. (Tadaa! That explains the lack of updates about me! Mysteryyyy~~~)
So, what sparked off this post?
Well, I had a rather heated debate recently and seeing how bad my temper still is, I needed a place to vent and after going through the list of places I could, I realise, DANG IT! I can't post it on FaceBook or the person I'm 'bitching' about will see it and it's gonna be awkward whenever we see each other, much less work together. Even if I use 'secret coding' for my posts, people might put 2 and 2 together and spread it to them and that gets EVEN more awkward.
I used to have the notion that as long as you're right, you are free to say whatever you want. Express your feelings! Ignore the rest!
Maybe I'm not all that experienced in life, but after peeping into the working world and all, I realise that that is not a way for survival. Sometimes, you gotta keep peace for the sake of family, friends and yourself. It never hurts to have more bridges. 'Destroying' relationships might be harmful, you never know when you might meet that person's help.
Superficial, materialistic but isn't that true? Isn't that what we do best? Otherwise, why would we put on countless masks when interacting with others.
Alright, seems like I've digressed a little. Back to FaceBook.
So if we do not wish for certain people to see our posts, it would seem simple to just delete them. Save us all the trouble! But nowadays, the 'Friend' status on FaceBook seems to be akin to a friend status in real life. Deleting them off on FaceBook would be indirectly saying, "I do not wish to have you as my friend, not just in FaceBook but in my life too." Andddddd, that will just cause awkwardness and resentment.
Especially for the workplace! What do you do when your colleagues or even worse, your supervisors, add you on FaceBook or started following you on Twitter? Accept their friend request(Hey, they want to be friends with you!) or ignore them? Sometimes, I'm hesitant to accept colleagues on FaceBook as I do not want them to know what I do on my own free time. And I certainly do not really want to know whether my boss enjoys his date at the beach or so. Seems kinda of disturbing. I mean.
But if your boss looks anything like this, then it's a different story!
And if you are upset at some stuff at work, you can't really rant about it on your posts. Can you imagine your boss 'Liking' your post about how horrible your colleague is? -AWKWARD-
Also! Whatever you post online, be it blogposts, twitter updates or FaceBook posts, you might forget about what the content is after a few months, but the internet NEVER forgets! People can always backtrack to your history, especially with the new FaceBook Timeline. =.=
There, I've given most of the bad points about the lack of freedom of speech online. Of course there are good things about networking sites. I've killed off countless of hours laughing on Tumblr, reading blogs and writing personal blog entries. All I'm saying is that, before we can churn out a ranting post, think. Think about the consquences that will befall upon you or others. Your posts normally reflect who you are or more likely, people's perceptions of you as a person. If you tend to have lots of discriminating posts, well, what do you think that says about you? As your internet networking grows, your freedom of speech will start of shrink.
'With great power comes great responsibilty.'
Alright, that was lame. Hahahahaha!
Maybe this post is irrelevant to you because you are all that open and stuff, but well, this post is relevant to me and how I see stuff now! So if you disagree, so be it. I'm not forcing my ideas on you!
1st post of 2012 and after 6 months. Seems kinda of heavy. Oh well, anyway, here's wishing you people a belated MERRY CHINESE NEW YEAR!
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