I still remember a few years ago when my sister in law said something about me joining Facebook. I vehemently refused! At that time my only real exposure to social networking was MySpace, who I felt for the most part was full of a bunch of immature, self-involved children and I had recently deleted my profile there because I just didn't see the point.
I finally gave in the day before my birthday in 2008. Hard to believe it's been that long and imaging the amount of time wasted in Facebook at this point just depresses me. I started with a profile, added friends from various parts of my life and soon after created a fan page for the dogs titled, Desta Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Privacy soon became a concern and I stripped the fan page of everything except a few photos and links to reference people to my "dog" profile. It was a huge undertaking to separate things, but now I'm glad I did.
Fast forward to today! I'm sure an entire book could be written about various aspects of Facebook and social media in general. Social media seems to be the norm today; but it doesn't come without a price. It's used and abused in so many complex ways. Companies who refuse to keep up with technology are suddenly finding themselves with missing and diminishing business. 15 years ago, how often did we go online to search for reviews on a product, hotel, business? Today consumers constantly search for online reviews and content about products quite frequently before purchase; there's been a huge shift from word of mouth to online word. But here's the catch 22, we are taking advise and feedback from strangers. Word of mouth comes from people we know and trust it's an interesting shift. Retailers without an online presence are suffering. Several years ago with all the Black Friday hysteria Cyber Monday was dubbed, and now for the last few years along with special Black Friday deals there are now special Cyber Monday deals. The internet isn't going away folks and it will continue to evolve and shape our communities and the way we interact with each other.
I have a variety of friends and personalities that I interact with. I enjoy different viewpoints and love seeing people's hobbies. Being active in the AKC conformation world with my 2 youngest Ridgebacks it's introduced me to many wonderful people, some of whom I never would have met otherwise and been sorry I never had. However it's also introduced me to the complete opposite as well. I realize there will never be a day the entire dog fancy gets along. But I sure think a lot of people could try a lot harder at it!
We all encounter mean nasties and bullies in our lives, the world seems to have no shortage of them; but it's how we respond to them that makes the difference. The peacemakers out there will tell you to turn the other cheek, which I mostly agree with; I believe at some point there is a line you have to decide you will never let them cross. No matter how much someone should contribute to the general getting along, there is absolutely no excuse to abuse someone in any manner, directly or indirectly. My viewpoint is to peacefully stand up for myself. I stay calm, collected, use common sense and a tone of voice that is confident but otherwise devoid of emotion.
Bullies will use whatever tools they have to belittle, dominate, ridicule or otherwise make the lives of others miserable and one great tool they have is Facebook. From obvious outright attacks to thinly veiled pseudo-anonymous jabs at someone or a group of individuals. I've seen attacks go as far as creating some over-dramatized false account of a situation and encouraging everyone to publicly roast this pseudo-fictional person to creating imagery that supports one side or another to vaguebooking in attempts to stir up their connections of "what's wrong??!" and make it looks like other people drug the information out of them when it was their ultimate goal in the first place. I've tried very hard in the last few months to mitigate my exposure to this behavior. Some individuals I've outright unfriended, others I've removed their commentary from my news feed so I just don't even see it. It seems to circulate around the same people over and over. I'm never going to say I haven't participated or had my moment where my head and emotions haven't felt my Mount Saint Helens about to blow off my top. Feeling and expressing emotions is a healthy behavior, my concern is each generation seems to be less capable of coping with their experiences and emotions in a healthy manner and Facebook just is not a healthy outlet. Several years ago when feeling pent up angst for one reason or another, I used to drive out to my parents property, saddle up my horse and go blazing through the forest and quite literally, ride out my frustrations. My mare was an Arabian and she was always more than willing to do this with me, she loved to run. I gave her away to a family that lives near state land before I moved to North Carolina so today my outlets have to be modified a bit. Go outside, lay in the grass and get mauled my happy licking Ridgebacks, if you don't walk back inside laughing and wiping your face off there's something wrong with you!
As I said before, Facebook is a great way to connect with people you otherwise would not have had the opportunity to meet. I know that many of the people I've personally met in the last almost 4 years, I will be friends with for years to come, some a lifetime. We'll cheer and laugh together though good news and cry together through bad news. Every tool out there can be used for good or evil purposes and social media absolutely falls in both categories. It's the individuals using it for over-frequent shameless self-promotion or for various means of negative impact on others that had me considering completely disabling my account. However, I don't want to miss out on the opportunities to celebrate the successes and commiserate the disappointments to those people I've connected with. I think the solution lies in setting limits. Before you verge into the social media arena you need to decide in advance what you will share, how you'll share it, who you want to share it with and set limits on what you will allow others to do to you and what you will participate in. You can't control others, but you can control how you respond to it.
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