On Being True To Yourself On Social Media.

Despite the title, it was actually a defense of the freedom we have here on social media to write and post about whatever is interesting to us.

And when you think about it, even just a little, that freedom is something we should cherish, and not be critical of in others

All social media sites basically work the same way. The posts are all on a long crawl and you scroll down until something hits you. I could never see the point of stopping at posts that don’t interest you and and ripping someone a new asshole because you didn’t like what they posted about.

It really begs the question… why the hell are you doing this?

People who make a habit out of criticizing others for creating posts about stuff that interests them are bullies and trolls. Pure and simple.

These tend to be, more often that not, people who post nothing themselves and who are pissed off about stuff that has nothing to do with social media.

I know all this because at one time, I used to have about 2500 Facebook friends, which meant I was attracting new friends fairly often. But one day I was scrolling down my own page and started to notice comments that had very little to do with whatever IU was writing about.

After a couple weeks of seeing this, I started to feel demotivated. Because at that time, it really didn’t take a lot of negativity to turn me off. Plus I was also dealing with a couple of trolls over on LinkedIn.

So I was pretty much fed up with these assholes.

Now at this time I was very active in my anti-Rob Ford & Stephen Harper posting.

Now the kind of posting I was doing at this time was designed to get people to wake people up a bit so I fully expected a lot of pushback. And that would have been fine, so long as it’s pushing back within the framework of the debate that’s going on.

But what was happening to me on Facebook was organized and designed to discredit me. And, at the time, it was just something I didn’t feel like dealing with.

Finally I just said fuck it, and closed my account. I waited a few days then opened a new account, friending only the people I knew and who I thought might know me.

So now I’m sitting at about 120 people and nobody’s giving me a hard time outside of David Van Fleet. But that’s only to be expected. (LOL)

The point here is simple. When you decide to post on social media, you are actually opening yourself up to the world. And sooner or later you are going to attract a low life scum bucket or two.

These people aren’t anything I normally can’t deal with, but I know a lot of people who are not equipped with the thick skin and don’t give a shit attitude that I have developed here.

My best advice to those people is to keep on being true to yourself and don’t let anyone tell you what do do here. Because one true thing about social media is that there are always going to be way more people who like what you have to say than those who don’t.

You can’t really do anything about the bullies and trolls. They are always going to be there. It’s up to you to teach yourself to ignore them. Eventually they will move on in search of easier prey.

Post Script: I want to thank Barbara Munshaw for inspiring this post. You should look her up. She’s one of the few digital marketers I know who really gets how to use social media and one of my favourite human beings.

n addition to being a beBee Brand Ambassador, Jim Murray is a marketer and creative professional. His partner, Charlene Norman is marketing strategist and operations tactician. Their collaboration, Bullet Proof Consulting, specializes in Brand Engineering: Helping companies achieve more effective branding, stronger reputation management, greater productivity, higher efficiencies, and ultimately, increased profits. In short, Bullet Proof helps companies change their thinking for the better. Find out more at www.bulletproofconsulting.ca