Social Media Throws Common Sense and Manners Out the Window

I just got a notice from Twitter that an "Automated Mailing Service" has now started following me. I suppose they mean that they want me to start following them back? An automated robot junk-mailing service wants me to start following them? Are they kidding? Why in the world would anyone follow a automated junk mailing service?


Maybe they got my mailing address confused with the mailing address of my kitchen toaster? Maybe she'd be interested in junk mail generated by a robot. I'm not.  

L7 - SH*TLIST

Today the rules on manners and how friends, acquaintances and strangers alike are treated have been turned on its head.


Social Media, as a supposed source of bringing more people together faster, has also brought along with it a distinct lack of common sense and manners 


In the race to accumulate as many fake friends and followers as possible, tradition and common courtesy have been thrown out the window.


It used to be that little things that we took for granted as to how our privacy were to be respected are  today viewed as relics of the prehistoric past. Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the Social Media landscape set the rules as to who matters and who doesn't in today's world.


As if having thousands of "friends" or "followers" most of whom you've never met (or even many who you paid for) actually matters to anyone excepting the narcissist living inside of one's self.


The rules of common courtesy used to dictate silly things like don't call people up at home after eleven pm... Eleven? I remember when it was nine pm!... They also emphasized the importance of an introduction from a mutually trusted and respected friend... Now, if by some chance someone get's your email address, you become fair game for a litany of junk mail and memberships into clubs and associations that you've never asked for nor, in many cases, have you ever even heard of!


I get tons of mail from Facebook and Linkedin (don't forget Twitter) notifying me of this or that. I don't mind the birthday notices or notices for events that I signed up for but I really hate the notices that congratulate me for becoming a member of some community that I didn't sign up for.


Someone has met me once... That, in some strange way, let's them think that gives them the right to sign me up for their community they've started on Facebook... Well, it doesn't. In fact, that puts them on my sh*tlist.


Next time I write about this sort of bad behavior, I will begin to name organizations. Not that it matters what I say, but it's bad PR.


It's 2011, sure. And the rules of the games have changed slightly due to the Internet. But there's one rule that I doubt has changed in 2,000 years. People might know it, but then again, people today don't read books. So let's me explain it to you.


In the bible in Luke 6:31 it says, "Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you."


Since you go and sign me up for communities and clubs without my permission, I'm sure you will warmly welcome all the clubs I sign you up for? Say, "Clubbing Baby Seals Association, " "Nazi's for Peace," or how about, "The 10,000 Coupons a Minute Club?" That's the smash success club that guarantees sending you, robotically, over one million coupons by email every 3 months so that you can save!


No?


OK. Then have some manners and common sense. Please don't join me up to your Social Media, or Twitter or Linkedin, Facebook, whatever community without asking me first.


Hopefully your parents did teach you better manners than that.