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Haven’t we all heard the phrase, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all?”
It is a rule we should all try and follow closely although the internet, especially the instant-gratification personality of social media, can cause extreme carelessness. When we are bombarded by literally hundreds of emails, articles, Tweets and status updates each day, it is easy to forget that there are real people involved.
Case in point, I have been a member of Meetup.com’s Tennis Group for several years. As a member, I have participated in a few events and received the organizational emails and responses. One thing about Meetup.com’s default setting – when one person replies to a Group email, everyone is copied. This issue can be fixed by changing your default settings which will control the flow of emails. As one can imagine, if you do not change the default setting, you can receive 70+ emails is one day!
One (self-proclaimed new) member sent a nasty email to the entire group about this large volume of emails and accused everyone of being dumb or inconsiderate since she was getting hundreds of emails sent to her work address.
Without dwelling on why she would use her work address for a personal activity, suffice it to say, she received plenty of feedback and none of it was nice. Imagine my surprise last weekend when a new girl showed up for a local Meetup event. As she proceeded to boss the players around, a jokester asked if she was the one who sent the spiteful email the previous week.
Guess what her answer was? Guess again if she is welcome at future events?
My point for the anecdote is this one – in the virtual world, it is very easy to be brave and rail on others because it is faceless. Or, lose control and your temper because you are having a bad day. Would this girl have stood in front of a crowd of 200 strangers and told them off? Accused each one of them of being stupid? I highly doubt it but she did its online equivalent and received the same sort of playground justice.
How many times have you wanted to respond to someone’s ignorant or downright cruel comment or posting? Or, remind them that you’re smarter or know more about a specific topic? My advice – take the high road and let it go. Not only will you look like the bigger person in the long run but also you just might have someone to play tennis with!
Quick shout-out to the Plaid Racquet, the best tennis shop in the world and first place I ever worked.
As I begin the transition of my Blog to a more work-related one, I have struggled to find a good segue.
Who knew the Soap Network would be there to help? As I sat on the couch, aimles
sly flipping channels, I landed on a relatively new, old-school episode of Beverly Hills 90201. Intrigued, I settled in for the long haul.
The crisis du jour is whether or not Donna Martin should embrace this trendy new thing called the Internet and build a website for her retail clothing store. As an online marketer, I was endlessly amused by the way the internet was represented around 2000.
In the end, everything seemed to work out OK and Donna’s site was launched successfully…although there were still those awkward, unresolved feelings between her and David Silver.
Even though I am making fun of Beverly Hills 90201’s treatment of the internet, they actually brought up some very real problems I have seen as both a Project Manager and Marketing Consultant.
From Donna Martin’s attempt to go online to best practices for site development, I can guarantee you one thing – in 10 years, this posting will likely seem as outdated as 90201. But probably not in syndication on the Soap Network…
