My Social Networking Policies

I feel as if I was bought up in the age of Social Networking.

At age 9 I was introduced to chat rooms, before anyone really knew the dangers of them. I had multiple neopets, I role played in a Harry Potter chat room when I was 14, and then continued on to Bebo (big mistake), Open Diary, Live Journal, Myspace, Wordpress and finally Face Book, Twitter and Blogspot.

Trends have come and gone as they will continue to do and I have learnt a few things for myself. You can choose to read them, use them, or ignore them, its entirely up to you - just like you have the choice to open this blog page or not. Thats the beauty of social networking - it's up to you.

Because its "up to you" I get very very annoyed when people manage to break those boundaries. For example, my home page is spammed with complaints or insults or Farmville. This simply will not do.

1) I like my profile pages to look pretty and like me. If you post rubbish on my wall, or insult me, or comment rude things, I will immediately delete it and I feel no remorse for this action. I especially despise spam comments on any forum that are repeated everywhere, or applications. Often I right click these (on FB) and immediately select the option of "block all applications called "da da da". This generally gets rid of them for good. You will find my profile pages are filled with my friends, people I know, and nice things. Because that's the way I want it.

2) I only accept people who a) I know. b) I like. and c) I would like to hear what you have to say.

3) I have no remorse in "blocking people" (that is to say, filtering their comments or blocking the persons feed. This does not include deleting them, so they still think we're friends.) You will be blocked if you a) Spam.  or b) complain about everything and everyone with no desire to get help.

4) I have only deleted a few people from my friends over the years. You may have been deleted because a) I have not talked to you in 5 years and I don't even know what country you are in. b) Continuously insult me and offer no other form of friendship to make up for it.

At the end of the day, our social networking sites are for us. This is why i will never join Formspring - it offers nothing for me, only an opportunity for others to dig into my life, or anonymously insult me. No thanks - I think we all have better things to do with our time than that.

Happy social networking! I hope it encourages you, builds you up, and ads something positive to your life. If it doesn't, you should do something about it! :)

x

Post Script - Although my bylaws sound tough, the truth is Everything gets deleted that i don't want there, only a handful of people have been blocked (and you probably wont be reading this if you are one of those people anyway) and only a few have been deleted. I am not a perfect social networker - I know for a fact I have been blocked from a number of peoples pages and deleted from at least 2. I am absolutely fine with that. I would rather people did that than got annoyed with me and never spoke to me in real life (consequently, the 2 that have deleted me (that I know about) I see regularly on a weekly basis and still speak to me!)