Watch What You Post!
The Cyberspace
World Bank
is saving our
beat old posts
for just the
right occasion!
Maybe it’s too late to count ourselves out of the award-running for the World Cup of Stupid Internet Comments, considering how dumb that snippy-snappy email or website post was that we angrily tossed off a couple of years back when we were more irate and quick trigger-fingered . . . but we don’t have to have it start an avalanche.
Remember that comment we posted on some website way back when? You know the one. It went something like:
“If you knew even the first thing about business, you dumb geek, you’d get out of that garage of yours and get a real job while you return to the college you dropped out of, and furthermore, Billy Gates, if you think I would ever consider hiring you to even sweep my floors you’re sadly mistaken. You’ll never succeed unless you can stop dreaming and finish your education!”
Like an elephant, Cyberspace never forgets. The comments we make today on mover and shaker sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, BizBrag, Salesblogcast, iSALESMAN, Google, PoorIrishman, TBDConsulting and InterlakenInn are being watched and talked about. But so are the posts we put on downscale, disreputable sites like those commandeered by network media, incompetent government agencies, and porn purveyors — where what we have to say is given no more credibility than what’s said by the hosts.
Almost all of what we have to say today that has any substance to it, carries with it the promise of coming back to haunt us (if not bite us in our respective butts) ten or twenty years down the road.
Never before in history have we the people subjected our innermost thoughts and most volatile expressions to such states of accessible public permanence. Today’s passing thought will not land in a ribbon-tied bundle of letters socked away in a shoebox on some closet shelf or in some attic trunk waiting for discovery by distant generations.
When we hit that email “Send” click, or website “Post” button, we are literally donating our private thoughts and feelings to eternal public scrutiny. It’s taking some time for this to sink in, but the reality of it is striking. Where else in history did people set themselves up to make scathing, heat-of-the-moment remarks only to have them be dissected and subjected to overkill, out-of-context evaluation 24 hours a day, every day for lifetimes beyond their own?
The trick here is to:
A) Think before we click
B) Realize that anything we say, can and will be used against us in a court of public opinion (and having the right to an attorney won’t make a hill of beans difference!)
C) Trash our computers and never look back!
D) Overwhelm all of our friends and followers with a tsunami of upbeat messages that even our severest critics can’t help but cry tears of joy at our transformations. (“Kill ’em with kindness!” me mother usedta say.)
So, uh, before you comment below . . .
Comment below or Hal@BusinessWorks.US Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! Make it a GREAT Day!
Click Here to Comment On This Post