Over the break one of my friends up here posted some pictures on Facebook. In itself that is not really anything unusual, except for the fact that they happened to be pictures of a funeral that she had attended while at home. I only noticed it because that happened to be one of the items that popped up on my news feed for that day. I thought it was odd, so I commented on her wall something like "who posts pictures of a funeral on facebook?" She had some kind of defensive response mentioning that she has uncle and aunts on there too, to which I replied, "I don't care what you say, that's just odd to me." Me, being insensitive, didn't really see any problem with my actions. Well later that day I had been out running some errands and I had left my phone in my car whilst finishing it all up. Upon my return, I found a couple of text messages. The first from this girl's roommate telling me to be careful because the other girl was really sensitive about the whole thing. The next message was from her. It went something like this:
Dear Chris. You are making light of something that I'm really upset about and you are being a jerk. Please don't post any more comments on facebook.
Am I alone on this one? I just don't think you want pictures on Facebook where anyone, including your high school friends that you haven't seen since high school or that creepy guy who you met at a dance one time and hunted you down so you can be e-friends, can go through your photo albums of you dressed up like pregnant nun for Halloween, followed by an album of people crying at a funeral. I guess while I'm at it, pictures at a funeral doesn't really sound like that great of an idea to begin with, but it's hard not to take pictures when so many people are together who otherwise wouldn't normally be.
The internet is a tricky place to navigate. We want to connect with friends and family, and spew out diatribes about any number of things, but when it gets to the personal stuff, we like to assume that everyone is going to be tasteful and respectful with their approach to the things that we care about. That's just not the case. Because of the e-media we have - Facebook, MySpace, texts, emails - we often feel like this gives us a veil from which we can hide behind and hurl whatever comments that come into our minds when we'd never be so disrespectful or hostile in person. If any of you bothered to read the aggression post I had put up a couple months ago this is what this new media facilitates so well - depersonalized communication. That, in turn, results in normal people saying things they wouldn't say under most circumstances. It removes people from a sense of propriety, a la the Daily Kos.
My point is this: just be careful what you make available and where. Otherwise you could post a sonogram picture of your baby and get these following comments on Facebook:
Meghann: mini-Dave :)Maybe if my wall comments had been funnier it might have been more acceptable.
Kevin: Where is the penis?
Reuben: Man you aint gonna find that if this is MINI Dave, you can barely find it on Fullsize
Dave. haha jus playin with ya man. congratulations!
4 comments:
I agree whole heartedly. I'm very surprised at the pictures people chose to post and share on facebook. Especially since you have the option of making the pictures private to just those who are in them.
Same thing with blogs- if you don't want people to mock you, if you can't handle the spineless individuals that hide behind a computer, you shouldn't put it out there.
I know of a number of people who have broken up over text and email- it's spineless.
Those with true personal communication skills will end up ruling the earth.
i agree with some of what you had to say, but not all. obviously people are allowed to put whatever they want to on their facebook/blog/etc because it is theirs. And, yeah, they have to deal w/ maybe some "insensitive" people who hide behind electronic communication who may say something they wouldnt in normal face to face. but that doesn't mean you have to be one of those people. i did a post about my grandmother's passing (at which I took pictures of the funeral because I love her and it was a beautiful funeral and I wanted to remember it) and if you had commented "who posts about a funeral, really", I would have probably thought you were a jerk too.
I remember your post about her funeral and thought it was touching and done tastefully. I think it all depends on context and the way that it's brought it up.
Like Salt mentions above, those albums can be specifically marked to be private and shared with specific people. That photo album on her profile comes up literally right next to a bunch of other photos where she has a bunch of goofy pictures. And this girl also happens to make a joke out of almost everything anyway, so I didn't I was going so far out of bounds in making those comments.
To help illustrate further, it's similar to joking with Dave about his mom and her extracurricular school activities, and if I were to make one more joke and then all of the sudden he were to get upset at me.
I wouldn't have had any problems making those comments to her in person, and that's also the reason why I didn't hesitate to call her when I realized that I had hurt her feelings. I wasn't even making a joke with any of those. I just thought the context under which those pictures were being circulated didn't seem right. Let me explain further...
I can see why she felt hurt. At the same time, I still feel like we all need to exercise caution about what things we want to make available about ourselves on such public domains.
And again, the context of these comments and when and where they were all made demands different treatments. Of course I wouldn't have had a comment like that on your blog about your grandmother's funeral because you post about serious things on there regularly. Also you had a full explanation about what she meant to you and how nice it was to see your family, etc.
Whereas, when someone puts up pictures on facebook in which she's been posing with nativity scenes, or pictures of her halloween pictures dressed as a nun with blacked out teeth and gold chains, and making status updates like "had a fabolous night watching Willow and practicing willow hugs" and "it's sad that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs" (those are just in the last month), I'm going to have a harder time reading when that person is being serious.
I'm just saying.
Tragically, Reuben is right about everything.
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