This week, the latest political scandal hit the Internet when Rep. Anthony Weiner (inadvertently) used Twitter thereby sharing his naughty bits and tacky captioning skills with the world.
A number of media outlets and bloggers have again raised the issue that Twitter and other forms of social media make it all too easy for people to share something about themselves that is awkward at best, damaging at worst and often just plain moronic. Alexandra Petri in today’s Washington Post article said “Twitter magnifies all our most asinine urges by eliminating the possibility for any sort of subtlety.”
She’s got a point. When you only have 140 characters to get your message across, it’s hard to be insightful. Plus, because it’s so easy and quick to access and share on social media, those drunken voice mail messages, weepy Facebook posts and photo gaffes are captured for eternity.
In a scandal that rocked my 5th grade class, a boy who shall remain nameless, mooned another student’s Polaroid camera during recess. Due to this mid ‘80s advanced technology, the photo of this boy’s bare butt made its way around the blacktop and field and ended up in the hands of the school principal. The boy ran home embarrassed though came back to school later that day. After a talk from our teacher, our class never discussed the incident again.
Imagine if that episode happened in a 5th grade class now? His classmates would all have gotten out their cell phones and shared the photo with everyone they knew and posted it on the web and shared with a million other people they didn’t know. The concept of something dumb you did as a kid going on your “permanent record” takes on a whole new meaning in the social media age.
Politicians are not the only ones losing their reputations over social media. Many people have lost jobs over something they put on Facebook. A local company nearly lost its biggest client when a junior staff member inadvertently sent out a tweet from the client’s corporate account trashing the city the client was based in.
I’m not saying Twitter, Facebook et al. is all bad. People have been able to share important information with friends and family members during emergencies because of Twitter. These sites have allowed long lost friends and loved ones to find one another. And a Facebook campaign led Betty White to host Saturday Night Live last year. All pretty awesome things in my book.
To be fair to social media, people are still the ones doing the inappropriate tweeting, obnoxious postings and video sharing to begin with; the technology is only a conduit for their ineptitude.
I’m sure Weiner (Side Note: Good lord, did the Rep. not foresee the news headlines doing what he did with THAT name? Was it ego that he wouldn’t get caught that led him to do what he did? Was it the thrill that he could get caught? Was he just horny and technologically-challenged? Only he knows, I guess.) will not be the last politician who we see standing, contrite before us telling us that he was not in fact:
- A 39-year-old divorced lobbyist
- Hacked
- Some other excuse that hasn't been invented yet
And I’m guessing that it won’t be the National Enquirer that’s responsible for his downfall. More likely, it will be his own misuse of social media doing him in.
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