It’s my blog I can write what I want to

In Miley Cyrus’ new song she says “it’s my mouth I can say what I want to” and I love that, but I sit and ponder… can we really say what we want?

Yes I believe we can say what we want and on most occasions I say WHATEVER, I want. Although we have the freedom of saying whatever we want we must be sure that we are willing to back/defend those words once we say them. Once something is said it can’t be taken back. Of course you can retract your statement, apologize, say you didn’t mean it, but here’s the simple fact…. you said it – own it. Somewhere someone is going to remember what you said so it’s not going away. The same goes for writing, it’s my blog I can write what I want to…. true or false? True – technically. However, much like speaking you must own everything that you write, publish, or put on the internet. You never know who is looking at your writing at any point in the day/night, where they’re from, or if they know you or not. You can have something published on a blog or a social media site for a split second and you have just reached thousands+ people before you can blink and even process that you want to delete what you just wrote. Sure, you can delete it… easy, right? Not so fast, technology has a way of being able to instantly capture something we want to save that we are looking at. Our iPhones take screenshots and our computers have a print screen button that automatically copies what you are looking at it.

By saying this it relates to an article I wrote in the beginning of June about Facebook etiquette. In the article I spoke about making sure you screen what you write on your social media sites so that you don’t damage potential career opportunities in your future. Aside from keeping the alcohol and partying pictures off the social media sites, we must watch our manners [in my opinion]. Growing up there is going to be drama, and it doesn’t diminish after high school or even after you get married, it’s always going to present itself in some manner [trust me from experience]. Venting/complaining/bitching about the drama on sites such as Facebook is a way for us to get people [“friends”] to agree with us, like our status updates, and chime their opinion in on the matter. I have personally partaken in the slandering of others on my social media site, I am not innocent when it comes to that. From personal experience, I can tell you that it didn’t make me feel any better to slander someone on social media. I might have felt better for about two minutes afterwards or each time someone told me I was right, or they agreed with what I wrote, but I didn’t gain anything from it. It didn’t exactly make me feel better about myself… but after so many people saw it, I deleted it and owned up to the fact that I wrote it.

Point I am getting at, especially for the teenagers out there that don’t think before they write: start thinking. If you chose not to think before you write or speak own up to what you said/wrote. Don’t slander, trust me it doesn’t make you feel any better [like I said I know, I’ve done it before… many a times]. You can say what ever you want, you can write whatever you want. If you want to burn bridges with the words, than burn them but know that it is going to take a hell of a lot of effort to rebuild them if you want them back. Don’t give yourself a bad reputation for putting people on blast on social media, no one will want to befriend you if they think it’s going to happen to them next.

 

Be wise.