Don't Tweet That: 4 Times You're That Person Who Is Over-Sharing On Social Media

Do you ever find yourself sitting at your computer, mindlessly scrolling, when you come across something your friend posts that makes you cringe and think, "Why the hell would you ever tweet that?" You get a glimpse into someone’s personal life that is less behind-the-scenes and more “I just walked in on an acquaintance’s grandma in the shower.”

These blurbs are so rarely funny and hardly interesting that one may wonder why someone would even take the time to type the post. So, what is over-sharing?

The list of dos and don'ts of how to behave could go on forever, but as we become more and more reliant on our smartphones and social media to communicate, boundaries become a little blurrier from staring at the screen too long.

Our social media saturation makes us forget that there are ways to speak to people and then there are things you just shouldn’t say. Our Internet ballsiness might go back to what our teachers used to warn us about in elementary school about cyber-bullying: Everybody feels invincible when they sit down behind a keyboard.

Would you share your angry rants in the middle of your hometown with a megaphone and be able to respond politely when somebody reacts in a way that pisses you off?

Twitter, Facebook and the Internet in general can be great public forums to talk about goings-on in the world at large, or in our own personal spheres, if we can converse like we would face-to-face and be responsible for our words.

At the same time, it’s worth remembering that our Facebook profiles are not our entire lives. Ultimately, it’s your call what you want to share online.

Nobody has the right to tell you what you can and cannot say in any real or digital conversation. But, remember that once it’s out there in the universe in writing, you can’t take it back.

Here are a few things you might want to keep to yourself:

DON’T tweet every detail of your night out:

Please, the less you sloppily tweet between shots, bong rips or hookups, the more you can tell your friends the next day. Or not. The less we put out there on the Internet, the more stories we can share in person and the more people actually want to get to know us, in person.

Consider that you are also probably not enjoying your night as much as you think you are, or as much as you want other people to think you are, if you sit on your phone, taking selfies and throwing them up on Instagram the entire night.

Meeting new people is so much more fun when you don't search through their Twitter feeds and find every detail about every club to which they’ve ever been.

DON’T tweet intimate details of your conversations with other people:

Without their consent, at least. It’s wildly rude to share a conversation with your social media following that your friend thought was private. Your friends are sharing things with you; hopefully because they trust you, so putting it out there for your Twitter followers to see is a betrayal of their trust.

DON’T tweet inappropriate pictures:

Look, world, at how much I drank last night! Look, world, at what a human face can do when you give it a few tequila shots and throw it in front of a camera. Look, world, at my friend regurgitating all of the tequila because girl couldn’t hang and I just had to take a picture and show it to you all.

Look, potential employers, at my crazy social life! I want you to look at it! We all have our embarrassing morning-after faces and we’ve probably all at least thought about drawing genitals on our friends' faces when they pass out.

By all means, take these Kodak moments, but don’t plaster them on Facebook or Twitter. Companies actually do look at your social media profiles.

DON’T tweet about the workplace:

Remember that episode of the short-lived "Kell on Earth" when People’s Revolution hired a girl only to find out that she was tweeting every detail of the job she just won before she even clocked in, and were left with no choice but to fire her? Remember how it aired on TV and, even if for just a few minutes, nobody wanted to be that girl?

For some reason, we feel like our personal lives and our jobs are completely separate and nobody will see if we tweet about our bitchy bosses or that coworker who didn’t deserve the promotion you totally would have gotten if you had done x, y or z.

Chances are, your bitchy boss or undeserving colleague has two hands and two eyes and can easily see what you’re tweeting. Why not just vent about it in person to a close friend or your mom or your dog?

There’s no problem with having an opinion and wanting to share it. Your friends on Facebook could be exclusively your friends, but that doesn’t mean they ever want to hear about your rough time in the bathroom after Indian food last night.

Present the person you want strangers to be comfortable meeting on social media. If your freedom of speech is so important and you really don’t want to censor yourself, switch your Twitter over to private and decide who can follow you.

Better yet, keep it to yourself and vent in a journal. Please, just tweet responsibly.

Photo Courtesy: Instagram