Jeff Jackson

RT Without Context

Yesterday I found a link via the Twitter of people that complained about their Christmas gifts. The tweets are outrageous, greedy, and ungrateful but the responses are what shocked me.  First lets backtrack: It appears this guy Jon Hendren (@fart on twitter) found people that complained about their gift, or more specifically not getting an iPhone, etc. @fart has over 14K followers so his RTs gave the original 140 characters a large voice.

This leads to several blog post, video podcast, and large backlash to the seemingly unselfish gift recipients. Myself included: I posted the link on my facebook that simply said “These people suck.” I did not think much of it, then last night I decided to see who these people were. I randomly picked a few accounts and discovered some had been closed and other set to private. The first one I found was @SeanMcmaster1 who’s original tweet to 92 followers (as of today, not sure about the 25th) said

 My parents are the worst mother Fucking parents in the world fuck you mom and dad for not getting me a Iphone. FUCK YOU. FML #Iphone

His twitter stream blew up, and he has been RTing the 100 of messages strangers have been sending him telling him to go kill himself, calling him a faggot, and sending him link like this one. Honestly that is the mild language. He says he was being sarcastic and did not mean it. That is what sucks about 140 characters and text, we sometimes miss the nuance and context.

What is worse an ungrateful selfish tweet, or the attack mob mentality from trolling strangers.

Then I look up this guy who is in far better shape than me. He said..

Other than getting a Camero and iPad this Christmas sucks.

Turns out he is active duty military and has been away from his family for 3 year. He purchased a new car and iPad on his own but missed his family. 

You can watch his video here.

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Yesterday when I first saw this I was going to be another example in my Digital Citizenship keynote. Then you see an active duty military give a stream of conscious tweet that get taken out of context (or placed in the wrong context) the lesson is on us.

So here it is…Stop RTing random crap without having a better understanding of what is being said. I’m sure some of the people were sincere in their ungratefulness, and they are not all in the Navy like Mr Bernard, but is that really deserving of slurs and wishing death on people?