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Back to Basics: What's Your Take on Internet Etiquette?
If there was a test based on Internet manners and etiquette most of us would fail. People sign on Gchat, but stay invisible. Others friend you on Facebook hoping to scope out your albums, but don't ever engage with you.
Vintage Geek Satire: Facebook Manners
Put our Tech Dating 101 series back about 50 years and you get this crackly black-and-white etiquette video of Alice and Timmy demonstrating Facebook relationship rules. Oh, and from now on, my laptop is my "computing machine" and FB is "the electric friendship generator."
Have You Ever Had to Defriend Someone Online?
Did you get defriended by someone hoping for a free cheeseburger? The New York Times reports that the reason Facebook pulled a Burger King app promising a free burger if you defriended ten friends was that it sent a notification that you were no longer someone's friend (usually, there's no annoying status update, unlike the glaringly public breakup announcement). How rude!
How Do You Feel About Relationship Status on Facebook?
By living part of our social lives on the Internet, we've come to have to do things online as well as in real life. If you make a new friend, the world knows you're now buddies because you'll add them on Facebook, too.
But it's not always harmless alerts about friendships — sometimes you have the unhappy duty of reporting that you're no longer in a relationship.
Gmail Tip: Never Forget Anyone in a Group Email
It can be embarrassing to forget someone in a big group email — when you remember, do you forward the whole string, or resend it to everyone? To avoid alienating anyone, Gmail can help.
From home, open up Contacts.
Miss Manners Says It's Cool to Ignore Friend Requests
Take it from Judith Martin, Miss Manners herself, that when it comes to friend requests on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace, you don't have to feel obligated to accept these invitations — especially when it involves mixing business with pleasure. The columnist in the Chicago Tribune recently said this about turning a blind eye to certain invitations:
Miss Manners is not one to suggest ignoring invitations, but this is more of a commercial solicitation. Even messages such as these from people you know socially are so widely distributed as to resemble the sort of open invitations that teenagers post on trees when their parents are out of town.
The Worst Commenters on the Internet: Hope I'm Not on There
Sometimes things just hit too close to home — which makes them funny because they're true! I recognized all eight offenders on Cracked's list of the most obnoxious commenters on the Internet.
There are the usual suspects, like the Defender (sometimes also known as "fanboys/girls"), The Ninja, who posts one comment and then mysteriously disappears, and the Macho Man, which is a nicer euphemism for the kind of aggressive guys who freak you out in real life, and can still do so in 2D form.
Do You Set Status Updates?
One of my biggest pet peeves is people who recklessly ignore acceptable online etiquette and fail to start their instant messages with a friendly "Hi!"
What I do adore are status updates that let you know if friends are away from their computer and when my chat buddies put up quirky status notes or share the song they are listening to. Do you set status updates on IM, Google Talk, or another chat platform?
Online Etiquette: Acceptable Instant Messenger Behavior
I got a cheap laugh out of the instructional How to Behave in an Internet Forum video last week, but soon realized there's never been any real etiquette on this wild Internet.
I've put together a list of tips for acceptable instant messenger behavior that addresses some of my biggest pet peeves. This one goes out to all you iChat, AIM, Yahoo messenger and Gchat regulars.
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Twitter Etiquette: Don't Twitter TMI
Although the whole principle of Twitter is to quickly describe to the world what you're up to, you don't want to go overboard with the "personal" info. For example, nobody wants to hear the intimate details of last night's date, the fact that you're in the bathroom right this minute, and hey, maybe you should keep the whole "in labor" thing to yourself.
You've already shared what you consider unacceptable Twitter behavior (bathroom breaks and anything you wouldn't want your mom to know are a given), so let's just make Twitter TMI a steadfast no-no and add it to our etiquette rule book.
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