Friday 20 September 2013

Liars, Parasites and "users"

With the advent of the various Social Media sites and their portability via tablet and smartphone 'apps', it has never been easier to 'meet' new people and interact with them pretty much any time, anywhere.

This - in concept - is great. You can 'meet' and interact with new people, the likes of which you might never encounter in real life, exchange views, thoughts, ideas, laugh and argue together and - in some rare cases - ultimately meet in the flesh and become firm friends. However, like all things in life, for every good thing/experience, there seems to be (in my experience at least) an equal and opposite 'baddie'.

Unfortunately, aside from the Cyber Trolls that everyone must by now be aware of, there appear to be a strata of social media participants who are little better than parasites (or 'users') of the less-suspecting, good hearted and well-intentioned site user.

In this I refer to the people who either :

  • misrepresent themselves - the Liars - (projecting themselves to be something that they are not in order to attract attention)
  • 'latch on' to others - the Parasites - to gather as much information about that person or their expertise for their own satisfaction and then 'drop' the 'innocent' party like a stone once they are sated   
  • manipulate others - the Users - for their own ends or gratification
Of course, there are Social Media users who have elements/combinations of all three of the broad categories I list here (and likely others that I have not): none of which is appealing or productive to any but the perpetrator.

The net effect of the Trolls, the Liars, the Parasites et all is an extremely negative experience for the innocent, well -intentioned Social Media user when such sites are conceived/designed to be exactly the opposite. The plus side, however, is that - as the actual writing of this blog entry attests - the well-intentioned user is now becoming 'wise' to the predatory nature of others and is more guarded - and perhaps better armed? - and able to deal with such 'enemies'.



So if you are a Social Media user reading this via a profile link, heed my words.... if you are not here with the best of intentions, we are on to you. 

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