With the rise of all these online social networking tools, more and more of ourselves and our privacy is becoming transparent. Throughout the years, there are mentors who sounded me about the amount of things I revealed online. Before the existence of Facebook it was my blogs then later about Facebook statuses. As I have mentioned before, my blogs have been an outlet for me and thoroughly helpful especially throughout the time I had depression before. But now, although it serves still as an outlet, it serves as a place where my desire to share, to connect like all authors do. It is where my writing can be published and I can have the satisfaction of knowing that I have readers. I used to get rather angry when people tell me that I am revealing too much. But as time went on and different things happened which are very not nice, wisdom came and I have a filter. But it seemed now that a filter is not enough. A mentor told me to stop posting all together.
I do sense that it is somewhat unhealthy to have that dire need to share what we are personally doing or thinking to the world all the time. Some things can be interpreted wrongly and give the wrong assumptions and can be misused to hold the statements against the person who posted or the person the statement is said to be about. Yes, there is a delete button but how sure are we that the things does get deleted completely from the virtual world? There are lots of articles that tell us about the truth that the information or whatever we typed and saved either online or offline on our computers do not get exterminated out of existence even if we delete them. Even photos taken in mobile phones or cameras, once deleted it is said that they can still be retrieved by parties that are desperate in retrieving them. So, how safe are we actually? And recently I saw this website shared by a friend called Take This Lollipop which is a very good experience and warning about the things we posted online and how people who have no good intention will do with what they can cleverly glean from the photos and statuses we posted.
So, how much should we share and how much should we withhold? Do we remove all information online completely or do we filter?
I have friends who are really careful about what they posted online. If any old friends click on their Facebook profile, they would not be able to glean from it the friend's conditions and their whereabouts. Two of my aunties are one of them. No photos of them online, no information of their whereabouts, no updates, no posts, nothing. Is it a good thing to do that? I do believe, yes, they are safer. I mean, if I search my name online, I will find an audio recording of a testimony I shared during STMS many years ago. I was quite shocked. I was even more shocked to find videos of me and some friends dancing in the long house we visited on youtube and I never knew the existence of those videos.
When I was told to stop posting things online this time, it got me wondering, should I posting or cut myself off from all these social networking tools altogether? At first I thought it's cutting myself off but then I thought carefully, no it's not cutting myself off but refraining from posting, from writing about personal things. It was rather ridiculous that I tell about me having a bad stomachache. To totally cut off is not the way too I believe because certain work groups that I am connected to there needs to still be connected. The thing to do is to, again, refrain from posting things or even pictures.
A reminder to self, it is not to be a total phobic about online networking tools but to use it as it was supposed to be in a healthy way, to connect with people. The world doesn't need to know if you had a bad hair day or you bought new shoes or you are going somewhere. Perhaps there are people who would like to share but I would question myself now, what is my purpose of sharing all that? To entertain people? To get support? To gain recognition? To gain popularity? I used to talk about that about others but now I should question myself. It doesn't mean that I will stop blogging but I will stop updating posts in Facebook. Even if I post, I think it will be about some issues. I don't know. I don't know the boundaries just yet. So, yeah. Learning more.
Would you help me keep in check? :\
Good reminders. Yes, filtering is very important. We can help keep each other in check. =)
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