Thoughts on Social Media Drama

Why All the Social Media Drama?

Some  People Need to Feel Superior by Always Being Right

Many people have been hurt leading up to and after the election by social media drama. Friends and family have rejected each other because of opposing views. It seems some people have forgotten how to be kind to others. Although many talk about tolerance, they aren’t tolerant of  others who disagree with their views. People are actually unfriending each other virtually and in the real world over this. They seem to have forgotten their common humanity, as well as their manners.

The Tongue is a Fire. Created on getstencil.com, Public Domain

 

Why do people do this? Some appear to get their significance by being right. So if someone implies they aren’t right, they get defensive or go on the offense. I get my own sense of worth from knowing I’m a loved child of God, so what others think of my opinions really doesn’t matter. I am free to be kind to  those who disagree with me and try to have a rational discussion to try to find some common ground.

If someone starts attacking the character of others on my own timeline, however, I don’t tolerate it. If he or she is not a real-world friend or someone I’ve worked closely with online, I just might unfriend him or her to protect my other friends from being attacked. If the person has usually been a real friend, I might just hide offensive posts.

I have seen two kinds of social drama. The first, mentioned above, involves people who strongly disagree with each other about politics, religion, or any number of other things and can’t help attacking those who disagree with them. Instead of saying things like “have you considered (any reason you have for your own beliefs)?” or “Here are some reasons why I have to disagree with you,” or “What makes you feel that way?” they attack with statements such as “You are an idiot to believe that.” They might even cuss at you.

Such statements make it clear that they don’t respect their friends with opposing views and cannot make a case based on facts or even reasons why they disagree. They certainly won’t win anyone to their way of thinking by making such personal attacks on people’s intelligence or character. They have made it clear they look down on and feel superior to those who oppose them.

Some People Seemingly Just Like to Start Trouble or Hurt People

We often call them trolls.

See that cloud over the troll’s head? Generally, that’s why trolls behave the way they do. If they see someone who’s happy they want to rain on their parade and say something nasty. I guess they enjoy making people feel as miserable as they feel. Those who create social media drama tend to have few real friends. They seem to get any sense of worth they may have in seeing how much trouble and pain they can cause. They don’t just pick on one person. They pick on almost everyone. They are the bullies of the internet and social media sites like Facebook.

How Do You Deal With Internet Bullies?

• You can unfriend them or just hide their hurtful remarks from your timeline.
• If you know them well enough to know why they are hurting, you might try to draw them out in a caring private message that expresses sympathy for the situation that’s hurting them and let them vent a bit to you.
• You can message a troll with a warning. After hiding the first attack post, tell trolls kindly you don’t tolerate personal attacks on anyone on your timeline and if they persist you will regretfully have to unfriend them. This will probably get you either an apology from a real friend or an even worse attack from someone who isn’t.

Please pin me.

I was inspired to  write this post by reading “Let’s Talk About Preventing Social Media Drama” by Eileen Calandro who was guest posting on “She Saved.”  In her post, Eileen shares her interaction with a mother whose daughter had innocently posted something she never expected would hurt a friend, but seemingly it did. The mother was contacted by the friend’s mother who said her daughter had been hurt by the post. Eileen offers her response to the mother of the poster. It is a helpful post if you have children active on social media and you want to protect them from social media drama. Although this was a mild case, we do know that some teens have killed themselves after being attacked by internet bullies.

How do you handle social media drama in your social media interactions?

 

PostLoop Provides Earning Opportunities on Discussion Forums

Chatting on PostLoop is Rewarding

Do you enjoy social media and wish you could get paid for all that fun you have? Facebook and Twitter won’t pay you for talking, but two other sites I know of will. I’ve already talked about Chatabout which has paid me once now.  Today I’d like to introduce PostLoop.

PostLoop lets you pick forums from their list on subjects that interest you and you just join the discussions. Most of the forums limit you to a set number of paid posts you can make a day. You do have to go through a qualification process first on the PostLoop Forum so they can give you a rating. That rating will determine how much you get paid.

I have given you some pointers in this Bubblews post on the system for earning at PostLoop that has worked for me . So far I’ve been paid twice. The payout threshold is $5.00. Be sure and read the terms carefully to make sure you are eligible to be paid through PayPal.

What I like about PostLoop is that I can work as much or little as I please there, up to the limit I can post per site per day. You do have to refresh your subscriptions frequently to make sure your posts will count for payment, as it’s easy to go over the limit without realizing it. Sites can also be disabled or go off line temporarily as paid sites.

I find the discussions fun and stimulating, and they often give me ideas for writing on other sites. Try it and see if it’s for you. It’s free for writers.  Forum and blog owners use it to hire people like you to keep their sites alive and well.

What I’ve Learned about HubPages

Back in 2009 I started a series in which I introduced the various on-line writing communities I belong to. I got as far as Squidoo and stopped.  I stopped because I got so busy writing at Squidoo that I lost interest in the other communities. Now, after becoming a member of the Giant Squid 100 Club and becoming a Squidoo angel, I decided to go back and take a closer look at HubPages. I had not really done much on the site, and I wanted to determine if it was a good fit for me. It has much in common with Squidoo, and I read a very good hub that compares the two sites. You might want to look at Hubpages vs Squidoo if you are not familiar with one or both sites for writers and those who would like to be.  It is objective and will give you a viewpoint other than mine. Its only fault is that it’s not up to date, so I decided to write an update on the recent changes at Squidoo.

Today I would like to discuss what I have learned about HubPages and its potential for earning income by writing. In August, 2009, I wrote four hubs at HubPages on unrelated topics. Then I moved back to Squidoo, and didn’t come back to HubPages until September, 2010. A writing contest lured me back. I was extremely lucky and won a total of $150 in prizes for this hub: Great Short Hikes in San Luis Obispo County. I decided there might be a future for me at HubPages after all. After writing a couple more hubs about living in wine country, I concentrated my time at Squidoo again to participate in a Rocket Moms session. For the past two weeks, most of my time and writing energy has been focused on HubPages so that I could  learn more about the community. I spent several hours over two days reading all the hubs that would help me get more familiar with the policies, tools, people, and techniques on the HubPages site.

One happy discovery was that they had added a few more writing capsules to work with . When I first joined there was no poll, no quiz, no table, no map capsule, and no video capsule. These new tools make writing a creative hub much easier.  One reason I like Squidoo so much is that it has so many different types of modules or lens building blocks.

Another thing I found at HubPages were many fine writers, and I read as much by them about the HubPages Community as I has time for.  I begin to interact in the comments on interesting hubs, and was reminded again how much more interactive the comments section of hubs is than the guest book on Squidoo lenses. Hub authors not only read and approve comments as lensmasters on Squidoo always do, they return to reply to most comments, and conversations start. This doesn’t happen as much on Squidoo. It does happen on Gather, which is a cross between a social networking and a writing site, but many people on Gather leave generic comments just to collect points and a comment like “nice” doesn’t inspire many replies. I will discuss Gather in a future post.

So, if we are comparing Squidoo and HubPages, a writer will find more varied writing tools at Squidoo than at HubPages, but he will find more interaction on his hubs than he might on lenses at Squidoo. As a writer, I find this refreshing, since every writer thrives on feedback. A writer wants to know he’s been read and understood, or to have a chance to clarify if his reader has not understood something he wrote.

A very subtle difference between the two sites is Squidoo’s emphasis on charity. Most contests at Squidoo give half your prize to the charity of your choice — as long as you choose a charity they partner with.  You are encouraged to give at least some portion of what you make through your writing to one of these charity partners. Because so many do give some or all of their Squidoo earnings to Squidoo charity partners, you can feel a great deal of pressure to do likewise, whether you can afford it or not.  It’s the same kind of guilt you might feel when you see solicitors collecting for the homeless as you enter the supermarket.   You might rather feed the hungry in your own community through a local program than donate to the charities  Squidoo partners with, but there is a certain amount of pressure if you’ve been around Squidoo long, to donate parts of your lens earnings to their charity partners.

At HubPages, it’s more like any other kind of job in that it’s assumed that the main reason you are there is to earn money, and there’s no pressure to give part of it away by donating all or a percentage of your hub earnings automatically to anyone through your hubs. That’s up to you when you get it. If you want to tithe it to your church or give it to the local animal shelter or homeless program, it’s up to you.

The policies at HubPages reflect the reality that most people work for pay as well as satisfaction and that they naturally tend toward self-interest . Example. If you are a salesman (and most squids and hubbers are affiliate salespeople, if only for Amazon), you don’t normally encourage your prospective customers to go to the store down the street to buy a product you also sell. Squidoo encourages lensmasters to do something very similar by encouraging them to link to other people’s lenses and recommend them. This is supposed to promote cross-traffic. But affiliate programs normally leave a cookie on a visitor’s computer so that when he makes a purchase, the affiliate (the one who wrote the lens or hub) gets a small commission. It is the owner of the last site through which a visitor clicks who gets paid, even if the review he first  read on a previously visited site actually convinced him to buy. Let’s say Jim is thinking of buying an I-MAC. He does a search and lands on Pete’s Squidoo lens with a great review of an I-MAC.  He is pretty sure he wants one and has already clicked through to check it out at Amazon. He comes home after work and goes back to the lens he visited earlier, and sees a link to my lens about what one switching from a PC to an I-MAC needs to know.  He follows the link to my lens and has his last question answered and clicks through my link to buy the I-MAC. I get the commission. Pete doesn’t. He doesn’t even have the satisfaction of knowing he helped Jim make up his mind.

At HubPages, where it’s easier to earn AdSense money, you get a non-monetary referral fee, so to speak. If Pete links to a Hub I wrote and Jim follows it, Pete will at least profit from a portion of my page views that come from HubPages’ share — not mine. If you use your special link to send someone to another Hubber’s site, HubPages shares some of the pageviews for that hub with you. This gives Hubbers lots of incentive to promote the hubs of others — not just their own, and they may not mind so much sending prospective customers down the street.

About Linking to Affiliates

One big difference between Squidoo and HubPages is your ability to sell from your lenses and hubs. Neither site will put up with a lens full of spam, but at Squidoo it’s understood that people are often writing lenses to promote the products of their affiliates, or maybe even a business they own. They allow you to have up to 9 links to any one top level domain that’s  on their white list. Only very well known sites that are pretty much accepted by everyone as reputable are on the white list. There is also a black list of sites you can’t link to because their reputations aren’t as sterling.

HubPages allows only two links to the same top level domain in a single hub, and they also watch to see how many of your other hubs link to that same domain. So if your primary reason for joining a writing site is to promote affiliates, you are better off at Squidoo — as long as you write original content that explains why the products you are promoting are worth while. If your lens is full of spam, you may have your article locked at either site, and if too much of your work is locked, your account will be deleted. Spam is not welcome anywhere.

If you were to join the Squidoo community today, you might feel a bit of culture shock. You would be entering a world where friendly monsters pop out to tell you that you just got points for doing something good. You would hear other lensmasters referred to as squids, and you would be considered a fresh squid. If you write a better than average lens, you are likely to be blessed by a Squidoo angel. Sometimes you will be invited to go on a quest, which is a kind of game that encourages you to visit more of other people’s lenses and write more of your own.

You do not experience that same culture shock at HubPages. HubPages has a more businesslike atmosphere, with no gimmicks. Policies and guidelines are clearly stated as they might be in a workplace. At Squidoo there is a whimsical flavor to even many policy announcements. It’s more like an amusement park atmosphere than an office. Sure, you work. But it’s also supposed to be a bit fun.  There are more creative outlets and game-like activities.  When I want to write in a straightforward, no frills fashion, I go to HubPages. I’m not expected to do more than write at HubPages, unless it’s to make my hub more attractive by adding pictures, maybe a video, or, if appropriate, a map, quiz, poll, table, link list, or Amazon capsule. But when I want promote my Zazzle store or do something really creative or innovative, I write a lens at Squidoo or take a quiz or go on a quest. Variety is the spice of life. All work and no play gets monotonous.

HubPages, however, has  frequent contests instead of quests. It appears that they happen quarterly. During a contest, there are lots of daily and weekly cash prizes, with a grand prize at the end of a contest month. When you enter, you have a fair chance to win something. This makes up for the fact that it might be some time before you get a payout for your Google AdSensse earnings.

What I’ve learned about HubPages in this last two weeks has encouraged me to spend as much time writing there as I do at Squidoo. Between the two sites there is enough flexibility to happily write anything I choose. There is potential for earning at both sites. At Squidoo you will probably earn more through affiliate programs than through AdSense,  since you won’t get a piece of the AdSense pie there unless your lenses rank among the top 80,000 out of at least 340,000 — and that was last week. New lenses continue to be written every day to compete with yours for that place in the top 80,000. Any money you earn from lower-ranking lenses will be through affiliate income.

At HubPages, you can expect to make more through AdSense than through affiliates, since you can’t link as much to your affiliates. You do not, however, have to compete with other hubs to get a share of the AdSense earnings. You get all the income from 60% of your impressions, and any affiliate income through HubPages capsules that occur during your share of the impressions. HubPages gets all the earnings from the other 40% of the impressions.

I hope this comparison will help other writers who are trying to find an audience for their work on line and make a supplemental income at the same time. On either site it takes more than a few articles to build up this income. I recommend at a minimum to have 50 articles posted on a site before you expect to get to payouts monthly, and that’s assuming they are quality articles — not rewrites of something you have published elsewhere. Both sites reward original content — not overly promotional pieces you might have used software to generate.  If you plan to work hard, write well, and be patient, you will finally see your payouts coming in. If you would like to join Squidoo, please click my referral link here and have an idea ready to start writing.  If you’d like to join HubPages, please click here for a great article by another Hubber that will be very useful to you: What I Wish I Knew When I Joined HubPages.

Update on April 17, 2013:  Many more changes have taken place at both HubPages and Squidoo recently. I will be addressing these soon.

What’s Happening to Communication?

I read in this morning’s paper that Facebook is aiming to make email obsolete in personal communication. Supposedly we are too busy to exchange long personal email and phone calls. Instead, we will tweet, email, and text short bits, and send all these communications to our Facebook page at the same time in a sort of one-click publishing  communication.

I’m wondering what has happened to thinking and real heart-to-heart or mind-to-mind communication. Must all our thoughts be reduced to 140 characters more or less? Perhaps the ugliness on the political scene is related to posting propaganda and talking points in 30 second sound bites and tweets thrown out at the world to whomever will listen instead of engaging each other in thoughtful face-to-face conversations.

Perhaps we do the same thing in personal conversations with family and friends. We laugh at the Zits comic strip as family members text each other, or text someone else while someone in the same room is attempting to have a conversation. But it really isn’t funny. People are tuning out those who are present in favor of those who are absent.

Supposedly the schools are trying to teach critical  thinking skills, but where do you use them in a Tweet or a Facebook post? Complex thoughts need complex sentences. Have our attention spans become so short we haven’t time for complex thoughts? For more than surface communication? No wonder people  cannot solve problems or reach consensus. It takes more than a few Tweets.

Never Mind the Paper Trail! Have You Googled Yourself Lately?

A few days ago I got an email indicating I needed to approve a comment on the Squidoo lens I wrote about the death of my daughter, Sarah. When saw I the comment and who sent it, I was floored. It was from a friend I’d lost track of for a few years — a close friend. Both of us had moved and begun new lives, and that tends to make people busy and disinclined to keep up with people they rarely see. The urgent tasks in the present tend to blur the past a bit, for better or worse. Although there was no last name, I knew that those comments could only have come from my friend Dianne. But I couldn’t figure out how she found that lens about Sarah out of the blue. She hadn’t even known about Sarah’s death until she read it.

I was able to answer Dianne back through Squidoo, and I asked her how she ever found me and the lens. She replied that she had looked me up on Google. We have exchanged a few emails since then, but I was curious as to what Google had revealed to her. Tonight I finally had a few minutes and thought I’d take a peak. Amazing! So far I’m on page six of at least 15 link pages where my name is mentioned. I would expect to see my name on my blogs, web sites, and social networking profiles, but I was quite surprised to see the other places my name appeared — so far. I found that one statement I made was quoted on several sites. One article from my web site was quoted and credited, but with no link back to my web site.  It was also  summarized on a Chinese web site. I had forgotten about all the comments I had left on other people’s blogs. I even found myself listed in the county records as the informant of my mother’s death, since I was with her to the end and did report her death. Just now on page eight I filled out a form that appeared to give me a chance to correct company information on a directory listing. When I hit preview, I discovered it was a come-on to get you to pay for an upgraded listing. Boo! On page nine the listings start to be mostly  really not me or repeats.

What I discovered is what many have already said —  what you say on line tends to stay there. I try never to say anything I would be ashamed of if anyone I knew read it. I can see that when you start down the social networking road your name does get out there and stays out there. I suppose I also have a paper trail, but most of what I write is no longer on paper.

Guess I’m a Social Networking Junkie

“Twitter is limited to messaging, keeping people on the site an average of just eight minutes per month. Facebook offers far more diversions, with users spending an average of nearly three hours per month on the site, according to Nielsen.” by Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer from Facebook moving into Twitter territory posted 3/14/09

I’ve always wanted to be above average at something, but it’s hard to believe that so many Twitter users average only eight minutes a day, let alone a month. Maybe this is because I’m still in my Twitter honeymoon period, learning the ropes, and finding the right followers and people to follow. I want to connect with home school families and school educators in order to see what’s happening in schools of all types. I’m hoping I can cut down to eight hours a week on Twitter.

Facebook is a different animal altogether. I use it to connect with people I actually know or have gotten to know on Facebook groups. It’s an easy way to keep up with long-distance friends and the everyday lives of those I see once a week. It’s a great way to share photos with people who might want to see them. And it’s  way to let friends know which causes are important to you. I used to spend about two hours a week there, but since Twitter, I’ve cut down to maybe 30 minutes a week.  So maybe I’m approaching average there.

I have to admit I’ve changed my mind about Twitter. I used to think it was where teens kept each other posted on what they were doing all day. There is some of that, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve learned in a week on Twitter from those in digital education about the new face of education and how teachers are being encouraged to use computers in their classrooms. I get updates on CPSIA developments, and get links to terrific blogs and videos I would never have found any other way. Come to think of it, it’s not Twitter itself that I’m spending all this time on — it’s all those links it leads to. If you haven’t begun to tweet yet, try it.  You can follow me as barbsbooks and be among the first to find out about sales and new products for educators who are still using books. I’d love to network with you.