Just a quick thought tonight because I’m back in Arlington preparing for another week-long Young Authors Workshop at Firefly Moon. I set up the room, grabbed dinner, came back to my host home, and sat down with two-day’s worth of the Cape Cod Times.
I was quickly scanning the advice columns when one story caught my interest. A woman was attending her ten year high school reunion and said that she always kept up with her classmates on Facebook. At the reunion she was able to congratulate births, marriages, etc. One person had posted she was leaving for a trip to Europe the following month. The woman told her that her trip sounded fun. The person replied how awkward it was that she knew her personal business when they hadn’t spoken in ten years. The woman asked if she was being rude by commenting about the trip, even though it was on Facebook.
Obviously she wasn’t being rude, because Facebook posts are meant to garner comments, written or otherwise. What stuck me about this story is how different our perception is when we’re posting something on Facebook or saying it face to face. This person wouldn’t think of sharing her personal business face to face with someone she hasn’t seen in ten years, but yet posting it publicly was fine.
When we talk face to face we are cognizant of what we say to people, but it seems we lose some of that cognizance when “writing to the masses”. Just another way social media has altered our thinking with regard to communication.
And so, as another day goes by, I try not to speak differently on Facebook or here in this blog than I would face to face, but it definitely is different when you can’t “see” the audience, just something to think about, and …I have written.
Leave a Reply