The internal censor button
“Can I contact someone at Twitter about a post that was just a little too offensive?” was the question I was greeted with this morning. “Yeah, there is an admin that you can get in touch with” was the chorus of reply’s that resonated between fellow colleagues.
It had transpired that one of my colleagues, Becky, had seen a twitter message this Sunday from a well know industry person that was less than savoury to stroke victims. While the person responsible for sending the tweet did not write it, it was a sure sign indication that things have changed since everyone became a published racconteur overnight.
Is the internal censor button that distingushes the human being from our pre-evolutionary homosapean creature is being mindlessly eroded away by social media?
While the web in which we communicate today has become a quagmire of interpretation, the time spent checking what we put out there has quickly disappeared. Everything is time sensitive, being the first to post a news story, show support for a cause and even throw the proverbial insult is only measurable in the moment in which you live today.
Social media is the globalisation of the web, it is the real time communication that we dreamed of for centuries, but it has become so powerful, so radical and free that we have forgotten that the one element that can make or break it, is the person on the end of the keyboard.
Yes, you and I are the ones that press enter, submit and send.
This isn’t a call to web censorship, far from it. This is a call to sensible human beings acting just like that, sensible.
So the next time you think you are going to post something “funny” or a little “risqué” just think, “would I actually say that in public, and to that person’s face?”
