Facebook - Okay, we get the picture. Life’s sucks, understandably so if your boss is a dick and your partner’s dumped you and your dog simultaneously pooed on your Manolo’s. Or perhaps you are full of internal sunshine and you see the positive in everything now that you are born again and feel elevated, all the time, every day. In both cases, no need to repetitively post all the hate or love on your status.
Twitter - Same as above. some followers might be interested in your every minute of every hour of your every day activities but please do consider the rest of us. See, it’s not only your friends that learn that you are on the bus on your way to work, that it is raining where you are, that your egg sandwich tastes good but your coffee less so. That you are at work, that you need to pee, that you will only tweet when your lunch break. That actually, why restrict yourself from tweeting, because your boss is a dick anyway. That you will tweet all through the work day (sigh).That you just made tea. Please, boregasm.
tumblr - Although I am guilty of this myself, in my defence I don’t call my tumblr a blog and I don’t expect people to subscribe to it via email or RSS. It’s an online creative dump for my personal use of online inspiration storage. If you are asking people to subscribe to your feed, then why not have a theme, like these great tumblogs by naturalbelle or ofanotherfashion. Themed tumblogs are on point.
Blogging - Unless you are a life & style blogger, photoblogger or magazine blogger etc. then you should never post a picture without at least one sentence that personalizes the post. There’s nothing like seeing the tweet of someone whose blog you read that says ‘new post – ‘imaginative thoughts of a serial reader’ only to click on it and be taken to a photo of some random dude reading a book on the train and no further explanation. Like Afropolitan blogger Mwana Baa Afrika says in a comment on my ‘UK black blogs’ post, blogs are not newspapers, they don’t need to be updated just for the sake of it.
Skype - I don’t use skype enough to moan about other skypers. All I can offer is that if you have decided to pamper yourself with a facial mud mask and a hair treatment that involves a plastic bag, then stay away from skype. (Annie, I promise to follow my own advice next time )
Linked in - not for personal messages. not for personal messages. not for personal messages. not for personal messages. not for personal messages. Which leads me to:
Email - which is great for personal messages. However, when it comes to forwards, any information you pass on must be relevant to the recipient. Never send a feminist an email with these types of stupid jokes, for example. And if you support a good cause, as most of us do (right?), it’s only fair you ask yourself if I’m likely to donate to your neighbour’s endeavours to preserve butterflies in his garden, before hitting send. Don’t get it twisted, I absolutely love butterflies, and respect organisations like this and a butterfly inspired me to write this poem, so I am a potential butterfly funding type but #justsayin… Lastly, the most unforgivable, vile thing to do in terms of forwarding emails is waste valuable time with one of those selfish chain messages that will bring YOU good fortune if I send it to ten of MY friends and ME bad fortune if I don’t send it to ten of MY friends. Spare me, please.
We are all guilty of these on occasion, and some people actually manage to tweet all day long and remain interesting, or post photos that feel like they are part of the blog’s evolution, so all written with a pinch of salt. Do you have any ‘netiquette’ pet peeves?
One other thing that is annoying is slow websites, and I’m worried that mine is just that. I would appreciate if you could tell me if took a while to load my blog? I tried fixing this the other day and ended up deleting the site or crashing it or something, so now I’m too afraid to try again without first consulting someone who actually knows what the hell they are doing. If you have any tips on how to speed things up, please share?
photo credit: ronada_______________________________
MsAfropolitan is the blog of Minna Salami, writer and commentator on Africa, African feminism, race, identity and founder of MsAfropolitan.com. Subscribe to posts via email or RSS . Check out the MsAfropolitan Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and shop design by women of African heritage in the MsAfropolitan Boutique
