Hisham Sarwar
I’ve been thinking long to write about this but could not find time to sit and collect my thoughts and put them in writing. In the last few days, I experienced the worst social media response to my posts and I began to wonder, why does this happen?.
I want to talk about social media behavoir. Circumstantial life events, brand loyalty or blind individual following mixed with happiness and sorrow reflect our social media behavior.
Behaving gently on social media requires maturity, a lot of experience in actual life.
Social media is a free medium with no policing and everybody has a right to voice their opinion. Sometimes you can say what you think is correct in your opinion in a decent, gentle way without hiding your original identity and sometimes you can get carried away with your opinion and use foul language by hiding your identity.
Its an amazing medium with a variety of platforms to express your feelings, share your moments and sometimes throwing out words that would make you feel lighter without worrying about repercussions.
Facebook is the most popular social media with around 2.7 billion users as of July 2019. Well, I’ve my doubts about all being active and genuine users but will leave that discussion for another day to brainstorm.
On Facebook, you can add friends based on relations such as family, friends and even complete strangers who have a decent following in order to learn from them.
The third category is usually called influencers or celebrities. The number of followers reflects the reason why they are heard. This third category has a moral responsibility of feeding their followers with a valuable, informative content which people can learn from.
There is a thin line of what is personal VS what is professional. The influencer or a celebrity typically shares a personal point of view based on their political observation, taste, life experiences or a certain thought process.
My observation is, people treat you nicely unless there is a difference of opinion and boy, that is where things often get ugly and go from bad to worse.
You probably have seen people spewing their personal opinion on political and religious posts on public profiles and pages using a language that is not only inappropriate but often crosses the thin line of decency. It happens because people disagree with a certain point of view.
Because of the lack of exposure and knowledge of how to use social media effectively, people do not realize and go at length to tarnish the character and opinion of the presenter without worrying — their opinion is been seen by hundreds of thousands of people. When it’s on social media, it’s public and other people get to know your personality and thinking process. Even if they don’t know, they get a fair idea about the individual.
The opinion could well be based on your affiliation, a difference of views or liking but the ability to craft your message nicely and gently differ to someone’s point of view is an art.
I personally believe, an ability to respond to disagreement comes with maturity and experience but one can not discount the fact that while staying behind the screen, it’s easy to wear keyword worrier attire and cut loose as if one is on a battlefield fighting a war of their life.
As a student who is so keen to learn every day, I try to observe different things and social media behavior has been my area of interest recently. It’s so exciting, sometimes frustrating too to learn how people react and respond differently to different content that usually expresses your point of view.
If the content is sharing some value, not only it gets engaged but also shared in good number.
If the content is based on personal opinion, expect counter-attack @ high knots.
People disagree with your opinion without worrying about the selection of words and literally try to tear you apart and feel proud of their behavior. Why not, that’s not an in-person disagreement and all you need is a keyboard to express what you want to say.
To many, it doesn’t matter how they express, more importantly, they want to convey the message across and if there is a counter-attack — that means a job well done and purpose served.
One often wonders, if our social media bahavior is a reflection of our thought process, preferences or personality?. If someone has a blind following to a certain point of view, political affiliation and can not absorb a difference of opinion, how can one respond in an exasperated way expressing words they would usually avoid when interacting in person?
I am hunting deep to find an answer but your opinion would be highly valuable, given — you do not disagree with my observation and go out all rampage to prove me wrong.
