Sharing too much?
Social media users are asking, how much sharing is too much?
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-11-06 22:14 GMT
While most dads-to-be find being by their wife’s side in the birthing room enough to keep themselves occupied, that clearly wasn’t the case with pop star Robbie Williams who recently welcomed his second baby with wife Ayda Field. Robbie kept up a stream of live tweets as his wife gave birth, and also uploaded videos and images all through the day, from the hospital. Robbie’s shared tweets/videos and photos have been called both “bizarre” and “heartwarming” by different sections of the audience. Some called it a promotional gimmick for his upcoming concert tour, while others seem to think the singer has engaged in a serious case of “over-sharing”.
Whatever direction the debate over Robbie’s actions ends up taking, the fact remains that it is all too easy to cross the line from sharing to over-sharing on social media. That photo of your romantic holiday with the hubby may be sweet to post on Facebook, but exchanging mushy messages about how much fun it was to rekindle your passion is not. “Social media makes it extremely easy to share information, but we need to remember that what we put out there is there for posterity,” says social media expert Kopal Doshi. “In my personal opinion, any information which will make you cringe and feel embarrassed five years down the line is too much information.
Also, we need to understand that there are people out there reading what you are writing. So anything you would not do with a room full of people staring at you is what you should not do online including cribbing about exes or your boss!”Of course, people differ remarkably in just how much they feel comfortable sharing. For instance, Robbie Williams’ supporters have pointed out that he is just as cheeky in real life as he was while posting about his wife’s labour. But most people are not really being their real selves online, experts point out. Aditya Gupta, the co-founder of Social Samosa and Igenero says, “Most people do have a very different personality online; they aren’t really themselves.
I personally think it’s best for a person to be him/her-self on social media. The idea of social media is to connect with people, share experiences and so on. The more original and ‘yourself’ you are online, the easier it is to connect with the same people offline.”Kopal advises you follow simple guidelines: “Do not use offensive language, be polite. Make sure you don’t share information which is not yours to share, is derogatory towards someone else, or can be used against you, professionally.
Also, it’s best not to share pictures online, which you might not want in the public domain.” Tech expert Vijay Mukhi too offers similar guidelines, but admits that the very nature of what we post online (and why we post it) often makes the content “controversial” in a sense. “A lot of the time, what some people post online is done with the sole aim of offending someone because if you aren’t posting something controversial or rebellious, it won’t receive attention,” Mukhi explains.
Once again, rules for celebrities are different from those for regular users. “Being a celeb does mean being responsible on the virtual mediums, but in Robbie Williams’ case, I guess he was just having fun! He was sharing a special moment of their lives with million other people in almost real time. For the folks who got offended, they can’t really do much but un-follow him (or any other celebrity who over-shares),” says Gupta.
And indeed, those same miffed fans sometimes even expect that celebrities share nuggets from their personal lives on social media. “Fans and followers have certain expectations from the celebrities they follow online,” says tech expert Hirish Thota Dhempe, before adding, “The posts should always be interesting to fans, they should comprise some information that they won’t get through a newspaper, making it edgy and interesting. That said, one must never cross the line.”