facebook rant #238

I always bang on about Facebook and social media, and how people pop things on the interwebs that perhaps they shouldn't.

Sometimes it's inane, like what you had for dinner, how much fun you had with [insert friend here], or that you're watching Project Runway. These updates are harmless, I guess, but they make me worry that you're boring. And then I wonder why we're friends. I don't care what you ate for dinner. I just don't.Then there's the smug braggers, who post nothing but good news regardless of what's really happening. "Jacqui can't believe her little boy is crawling already - at just 18 weeks!" Meanwhile, Jacqui hasn't slept in 20 weeks and she's back living with her parents, after discovering hubby had an affair while she was pregnant. But did you hear?! Jakob's crawling!!

(They're my faves and honestly, they keep me connected to Facebook. There's nothing more revealing about a person than the shiny message they post, especially when you know the real story. Must be the nosy journalist in me...)

But then, there are people who are just plain stupid. They post about scoring a job interview, for example, or they're tagged looking smashed in photos and call in sick to work the next day - and their boss is a Facebook friend. Or they use "your" instead of "you're"; "their" instead of "they're". Shudder...

Jakob Nielsen, an IT usability expert (ambigious title, much?!), has come out and voiced what I always bang on about - people need to think ahead before putting it all online.

"One problem is that it is impossible to determine what will be considered acceptable behaviour in the future," he says. "You can bet that there is material that is considered reasonable for a student to say today that will get people into hot water in 30 years, when they may be under consideration for the Supreme Court."

Google 'Facebook lost job' and more than 87 million listings come up, like this one, and this one, and this. Type in 'Facebook lost jobs' and you get 117 million listings! It's all fun and games, until someone loses a job...

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