Everyone and their mother posts daily about the trials and tribulations associated with living and breathing, but could this be a trap despite the habits ubiquity and endless renewal? I indeed believe that we are slowly placing our web-linked wrists into shackles with every, unnecessary addition to our online paper-trail. No one needs to know about your sisters affair, or the baby-daddy issues that seem to christen the internet with their slander and profanity, never the less they persist. How much should you tell your online neighborhood? Where does the line become crossed?

My general opinion on this matter is that if you don’t want your grandmother to know, then don’t post it. Now, given that I have this rule, I still am victim to the temptation of an angry and petty post or two every now and then, but there is never a time where some of the things I read online should be released. It’s not that we should constrict what is posted, but that we should be educating our peers on what is appropriate and inappropriate to attach your name too in an online forum.  If we educate each other and our youth, the temptations will begin to create barriers and guidelines to be followed, but then again that is simply a “pie in the sky” observation. Free will is something that is very hard to control and tamper with because in reality it is the only anyone truly has the power over, themselves.

I don’t believe that the social transgressions that take place online should follow the offenders forever, but I definitly believe that there is some room for repercussions in these instances, but not as far as the dog poop girl’s. Many forums allow people to report things that are unnecessary and not appropriate and I believe that this is the best way to control these platforms. The only way to preserve the internet is to become out own police in the online setting. The key is to not be a bystander, let people know that what they are doing is wrong in a chat or private. The more these issues are corrected the less they will occur.

I think the real questions that are being asked in new communication technological forms are : Are we utilizing the internet in the correct and most appropriate way? Is there an appropriate way? When is a post right or wrong? What are the psychological triggers in new media that create these types of conflict and how can they be solved?