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There’s a lot that can be said for the positive impact that social media has had (and still has) on our lives. For one, it allows us to connect to each other on a global scale.
On the other hand, it has also, over the years exposed the darker side of human nature, bringing out trolls in full force, in many cases normalising things that are clearly harassment and abuse.
If there ever was a social media etiquette class, then the above-mentioned group have missed out on it entirely.
READ MORE: How vulnerable are you on the internet? Here are a few ways to protect yourself
Some unspoken social etiquette rules include the following:
- Tag someone when you want to interact meaningfully with them
- Lodging a complaint? Don’t bring your friends into the equation to use as a pile-on tactic
- Tagged a bunch of people but they aren’t responding? Untag them because they hate being dragged into a conversation they never asked to be part of.
- DM’d someone with a request and don’t give them at least 24 hours to respond before spamming them on Twitter? Girl, bye.
Minor infractions but they do annoy people and make you look bad.
However, there’s an uglier trend that’s been steadily on the rise – and that makes the abovementioned and other obnoxious behaviour you may be guilty of engaging in look frivolous in comparison.
And that, my internet friends, is snitch-tagging.
I’m pretty sure you can already see that this is something awful, considering that the word snitch is involved, but let’s break it down for you:
MJ Franklin reports on Mashable that snitch-tagging is essentially the exact opposite of a subtweet. It’s also a power-play that takes away the original poster’s control and can invite unwanted reactions.
Essentially what happens is that someone sees a tweet that’s construed as being a little shady. However, because they don’t want to name any names they keep the tweet as vague as possible.
Along comes someone who can somehow hazard a guess as to who you’re talking about, and voila, because they want to cause trouble, end up tagging the person being tweeted about in the thread so that they can then see the tweet.
Let’s call it as we see it: you’re being a tattle-tale. Not only that, but you have NO good intentions whatsoever.
You could argue that this wouldn’t happen if the person wasn’t subtweeting in the first place, but here’s the thing: people’s tweet spaces belong to them. Yes it’s public, but it is still theirs.
Franklin goes on to add that there’s a distinct difference between tagging someone so that they can share in something they love (that kind of tagging is 100% okay), and doing it because you want someone to see something mean being tweeted about them.
So not only do you end up causing trouble, but you’re petty enough to not care about someone’s feelings (what if that person didn’t want to see that tweet?).
And as the Twitter hive confirms, it’s poor social etiquette and deserves all the block buttons in the world.
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