Column by Connor Jaschen, Features Editor
I may not be proud of it, but I am part of the social media generation. I’m out of touch with the whole ‘screen-to-screen socialization’ thing, so most of what happens online just doesn’t make sense to me.
I don’t do well with it at all. I’m a bad texter, I don’t post on Facebook often and hashtags may as well be not even be in my vocabulary.
But I can’t blame people who use social media well and often. To each their own, right? It takes all sorts of people to make the world go around. What I can talk about is this phenomenon of online passive aggression known as “subtweeting.”
For those of you as out of touch with the confusion of Internet lingo as I am, I will save you the trip to Urban Dictionary to figure out what subtweeting actually is.
Subtweeting is putting your issues with someone on social media, specifically Twitter, but it can be used on other sites, without ever actually saying who you are talking about. It’s petty, childish and most of the conflicts that have given rise to this fad could honestly be fixed simply by sitting down and talking to that other person.
But that would be logical and we wouldn’t want that. Instead, it seems everyone turns into preteens as soon as they have a problem and just complain rather than solve the problem. Because it seems like our generation thinks solving your problems like an adult is for losers.
If you are mad at your friend, your ex or your ex-friend, keep it off social media. It isn’t worth it. Let’s not forget that the Internet is forever; no deleting, no hiding, nothing. Whatever you put on the Internet is archived. So, when you want to post that one snide remark telling the whole world that “You don’t need no man,” after recently splitting from your boyfriend, just think about it first.
Ten years down the road, it will still be there. You may be able to get away with looking like a child now, but it is much less cool when you are married with children.
If you use the Internet as an emotional outlet, stop.
Get a diary, get a friend, get a dog, but for God’s sake don’t base the posts you make online on your emotional state at one point in time. At some point you will absolutely come to regret it.
For thousands of years, the human race has made it without using an online app to vent about how terrible people are. It worked, so don’t fix what ain’t broke.
The Internet is a tool, not a journal entry. You can lock away a journal or rip the pages out if you ever deem it necessary.
The same doesn’t apply to the Internet.