CYBER SORTER:This week, our social-media agony aunt advises on tagging, swearing and knowing who your friends are
Dear Cyber Sorter,
Before Facebook, I had a compartmentalised life. In work, I am Mr Professional, wearing a tie and waving at charts. When I get home, I try to be romantic. When I’m with my friends, I’m probably going to be the one wearing a lampshade as a hat.
Now, thanks to Facebook tagging, my world is in tatters. My credibility is shot. People tag me in all sorts of incriminating pictures – how can I stop them doing that!
I can’t defriend anyone (I am, after all, friends with all of them), but I’d like to avoid the sinking feeling I get when I get the e-mail that someone has tagged a photo of me.
Compromised
Dear Compromised,
Facebook membership means your life is an open picture book. The problem is you are not always the author or editor of your own story. You cannot stop anyone from tagging you in a photo, but you can go view the photo and click “remove tag”.
Unfortunately, the owner of the photo can still leave the picture up for anyone to see.
How much do you know and trust your Facebook friends? Anthropologist Robin Dunbar asserts that you can only sustain stable social relationships with roughly 150 people. Apply Dunbar’s number to your Facebook.
If you find a photo of yourself you don’t like: 1) ring or visit the “friend” who has posted the offending picture and ask them to take it off the site (this won’t go down well if you yell at your wife for posting a picture of you walking hand in hand in the sunset);
2) never friend anyone stupid;
3) never do anything stupid; or
4) compartmentalise your social media – Facebook is not the only platform.
Dear Cyber Sorter,
I posted a rant on Twitter that finished with “F**k off!”. Within a minute I saw four of my followers drop. Are people really that sensitive and, if so, what the hell are they doing on an open social network? Do I ask why they left, whether it was the post? How do I find out who they are? Why am I even bothered? Is there an app to find this info? Anyway, to those that did leave, well, feck ’em.
T
Dear T,
The app you want is called Qwitter and it updates you on all those who have quit following you and the last tweet you sent out before they quit you.
Social-media users can be surprisingly prudish about swearing, though it may also have been due to your opinions rather than how colourfully expressed they were. Clearly, you are not keening over your losses, but they irk you. Therefore, I recommend you avail of “qwitter therapy”, which brings you to inspirational quotes about unrecognised genius.
I assume that saying "feck 'em" to your detractors in The Irish Timesis a good way of saying bubye, but don't forget to un-follow them too. Otherwise you are letting them lecture you without the satisfaction of making them see you swear at them again.
Send your social-media queries and dilemmas tocybersorter@irishtimes.com