What My Mother Has Taught me- The Art of Good Manners

 

Happy Mother’s Day!!
I just grabbed my morning coffee to sit quietly alone at my computer to write a blog about being a mother, but after checking updates on Facebook of my favorite shelter magazines that I follow, I have decided to write about good manners in cyberspace. It appears I am not the first one to write about it but
There is a whole lot of Ugly going on today…..


I am amazed at what is allowed to be written on the internet these days and it seems everyone has an opinion they need to share in cyberspace, whether or not we share their views.
I wasn’t taught to be a bully, say mean things to or about people I don’t know or probably will never meet, but it is running rampant on the internet.
I even learned a new term,“Trolling – to make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.” 

The  people who rant using hateful words and profanity weren’t brought up by my mother. They have mothers too, but I cannot speak for their lack of social graces, I can only speak my truths. I am sure their mothers are not proud of them for being an ugly and angry person.

My mother taught me to have good manners and apparently social media could use my mother right now.

I spoke briefly about my opinion of people commenting on photos of rooms on respectable shelter magazine’s Facebook pages  in my last post,  “How important is Customer service to You?” but it seems there are a lot of Trolls who are having bad hair days and need to post negative comments. I blame the businesses who do not monitor or have a written policy about posting comments. I also blame businesses who at the expense of others post, “What do you think?” to illicit responses from their followers. That phrase alone seems to send Trollers into a writing frenzy.

Mother’s Advice on Good Manners:
Rule #1– “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
When you are allowed to comment on Facebook or elsewhere in cyberspace , do not rant on and on about how awful something is if you didn’t pay for it or hire that person to work for you . Don’t tell us why you hate that person, dislike what they did, why you have different political or religious beliefs than the Facebook person/business you are trolling. Just stop talking. Move on and do something else that will make you happy. You have just taken 10 years off your life by being an angry Troll. Angry= health risks.

Rule#2- “Don’t talk with your mouth full..”
Businesses who have a presence on Facebook and in cyberspace need to monitor their pages and have a written policy regarding posting comments to their page. Then people who have their mouths full of F bomb laced,sexist, racist, or threatening comments will be removed or deleted immediately. Police your page people!!

Chris Syme wrote a wonderful article about  5 tips handling negative social media comments facebook-real-time  that should be read by everyone with a business page on Facebook. Here is one of my favorite tips:
 “Filter the public posts and comments for the crisis at hand with the Manage Permissions tab. Facebook has a function under the edit page/manage permissions tab where you can flag keywords as spam. These can be added and subtracted at any time. You can start with a basic group of words that might flag hate speech and move on from there throughout the event. Make sure you don’t include words that are part of normal conversation like “hate”. You can always hide unacceptable posts when they show up, or change filter keywords at any time. Just remember the filter is not retroactive—it won’t filter posts already made.
Also, set your profanity blocklist to “strong.” This will automatically filter any posts with profane or obscene comments. After setting all the limitations, I also monitor the unfiltered feed through my dashboard in Sprout Social as well. This gives me a good take on how the total sentiment is running on the issue. Don’t delete negative posts that are civil. Let the conversation run its course. “

Rule #3- “Look people in the eye when speaking to them.”
I appreciate Trolls who actually use their real name and photos from their Facebook page so I can see who you are and what type of world you live in.
For those of you who post comments and I cannot see you, you are hiding behind your comments. Not very brave are you?

Rule #4- “Never talk back to your elders.”
If someone is posting a negative comment about you, never respond back angry. Respond as politely as possible on the post or respond privately. Nothing a Troll likes more is to start a fight or get you angry.If you respond nicely, it absolutely stops the conversation. Dead Troll Counter Maneuver 101.

Rule #5- People who live in Glass Houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Word of advice to the people who post ugly comments on shelter magazine’s Facebook page that are written about rooms they dislike: post a photo of your room/home and and let the designers comment on it. It’s only fair………

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