A man’s manner of social media conduct

Dear women, given the increasing number of communication channels available to us these days, it is only fair to establish a set of rules so that we know when we are winning and when to tap out.

We need a code of conduct, not too different from the secret word that they give you at those kinky orgies, where you get to play out your deepest, darkest fantasies.

Or the way secret service agents can remain undercover till they say this secret word aloud and  all the special ops teams pop in with enough ammo to take out the hemisphere. Of like ‘Sinbad’ and ‘Open Sesame’.

But without missing a beat, here are a few things you ladies should know about how men perceive social networking and what you can do to make it easier.

We don’t lie about our credentials. Some of us may claim to be thinner and hairier but we don’t make up stuff about where we work and how low the corporate ladder we really are. If you find a profile that’s too perfect to be true, then that’s the way it is. Outside of this caveat, men are mostly straight up.

We don’t wish to stalk you,  so stop being all shelled up. It is very annoying to land up on your profile after hours of browsing through list of ‘friends of friends’ and then finding that you have not even onp2e profile picture for us to see.

But just one picture, even a visa or passport application reject would suffice, if only to reward us for having wasted a few precious hours doing what we weren’t supposed to do in the first place.

If we text you, leave you a message, or tweet, please acknowledge it. There’s nothing worse than not being heard. We men demand equal rights. And while responding, please be gentle in pointing out in case we misspelt certain words.

As long as you get what ‘fraandship’ means and get the adjectives ‘pritty’ and ‘byutiful’, thank us for our sincerity and creativity. Don’t judge us! If you read brother Shakespeare you will see his spellings were so all over the place that they even coined a term for it: Old English.

In the unlikely event one of our lot starts trolling i.e. disturbing you, say by commenting too often or ‘liking’ every picture, don’t block or report us.

Instead politely create another page, put a few pictures of Beyoncé, or Katrina, depending on your body type, and send us a friend request saying how the previous account has been hacked. We men like such subtle jests and will understand.

At no point ever should you report a guy to the police. If a boy is reaching out to you on social media, it is an accepted fact that he obviously hasn’t got the wherewithal to have girlfriends in real life, or approach girls face to face.

Such ‘second life’ billionaire types need support, advice, a gentle letting down, maybe even professional help, but not of the penitentiary kind. By reporting them you are giving rise to phobias that even science won’t know how to classify let alone tackle.

A guy who trolls you is living out a sad existence, lacking guts, possibly even missing a ballsack; empathise, as much as you gender-specifically can.

So there you have it, the 101 guide to the new code of social networking conduct. If this doesn’t improve your Klout score, let me know. Not that I will bother, or do anything about it, but it might just highly amuse me.


The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine