Crimperman.org

I’ve been meaning to write this since my own Twitter hiatus and a recent conversation on there reminded me. This is happening a lot lately – perhaps I should make a list

Social media (by which let’s be honest most people mean Facebook and Twitter) can be a remarkable place to hang out,have conversations, enagage and laugh (sometimes) at pictures of cats. But some time ago I noticed a trend. A lot of the people I connected with in either Twitter or Facebook (disclaimer: I do mostly use the former) were going away. There was a general pattern to this as well:

• make or read a statement which though honest is a little contentious at best (or which could be taken two ways)
• get involved in a “discussion” about that which continues for some time (sometimes this can get heated)
• rinse, repeat

That’s not typical of every case, sometimes people will only be witnesses to the above. Sometimes there’s a particular topic swamping the sites and you just can’t seem to get away from it.

I noticed this a fair bit and then it happened to me. Over a short space of time I found my mood was dropping whenever I came off Twitter and/or Facebook. A common reaction at this point is to walk away and decry social media as – at best – unhelpful or at worst downright evil. The temptation to close my accounts, walk away and not come back was strong but I didn’t want to do that because I knew first-hand of the good parts of Twitter and Facebook. I knew how just one quick post could raise comfort and prayer for a situation I was going through. I knew the laughter I had experienced (not about cats). Social media was great. Social media sucked. Neither statement was false and both were true simultaneously.

Instead of closing my twitter account, I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good

So instead of closing my account I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good and while I was away I did a lot of thinking about social media and whether I should return and if so under what form. I came up with a plan which I have no called a social media survival kit.

The Social Media Survival Kit

1. Walk away – if only for short periods

You don’t need to close your account, just walk away from social media for a short while. Try a week. And be ruthless. For me I knew I would automatically check if I could and so I removed the icons from my ‘phone homepage. I deliberately made it harder for me to get onto Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it

Also don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it. When people do that I am reminded of the dramatic exits my children sometimes make (and I made when I was their age) when things don’t go their way. (Stomp, stomp, stomp…slam….door opens…”I AM GOING UPSTAIRS!” – just in case nobody heard the stomping). I’m sure not everyone is like that but I have seen a fair number of that ilk. Then again, if you don’t say something people will worry. So what I did was post a brief “I will be off here for a while, don’t worry. be back in near future.”

2. Stop listening – filter your stream/new feed

Sometimes it’s not a discussion you are in which brings you down, it’s just the seeming flood of inane and banal stuff on a particular subject. So filter those things out of your strea,m/news feed. For Twitter use a client (I use Plume on my Android phone but there are a few which do it) which allows you to filter out or mute tweets containing certain hashtags or words. I did this recently for a certain politcal story over here in the UK and I’m pretty certain it saved me from a lot of angst.

Sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little

Filtering out people is a little harder because often – and particularly on Facebook – they will know if you block or unfriend/follow them. They don’t get tiold but they do notice after a while. And sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little. On Twitter you can use the filtering/muting service of certain clients to mute certain users. Then after a while you can go back and unmute them. Right now I imagine people reading this are wondering if I have muted them . On Facebook you can hide their status updates from your News feed. Click through to see their profile. Click the Friends button just at the bottom of their profile header and from the menu that appears deselect “Show in news feed”. You can do the same with pages you “like” as well. It’s one thing to show support for a cause or company but another to be inundated with posts from them.

3. Wean yourself off – schedule regular time away

Schedule a time in your week (or day if it’s that bad) when you do not check your social media feeds. This can vary it length but for me it’s about two hours at any one time. During this time I do other stuff – you’d be surprised how much time you have. Oh and I am not talking about times when you are supposed to be doing other stuff here. I am talking about time when you would normally be “okay” to use Twitter or Facebook.

Try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”

In addition try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”. These will be the times when you are “bored” or waiting for something. Try to give yourself some of that “free” time away from social media. Me? I’ve started reading a bit more, I’m also looking to do a bit more sketching, writing and – steady now – thinking. None of these times are very long and neither should they be but it will help your social media mood if it is part of a balanced diet .

4. Be ruthless – regularly cull those you follow

This is not those who follow you, this is those you follow. I’ve mentioned muting people above but sometimes you’ll find people who are at the edges of your circles and yet can cause you no end of bad moods. The reasons you follow these people will be varied and may be very good but trust me if they or things they say are causing you grief you need to give yourself a break from them. Yes I know all the stuff about how reading views that are contrary to your own is good for you and how you should not only surround yourself with views that match your own. I subscribe to that theory. I also agree that sometimes you can be a good influence on those around even if they disagree with you. But. But, but but. But if you follow someone purely for those reasons then I’d suggest you unfollow them because you may find they unfairly shift the up/down balance of your newsfeed or stream.

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows. I have found that the greatest pleasure I get from social media is not from being able to follow a “celebrity” with a gazillion other followers but through interaction with other people – even celebrities. If someone I am following allows me to interact and interacts with me ( I don’t require them to follow me) then I will find that relationship (for want of a better term) healthier for me than one where one person broadcasts and I listen. Never forget this is called social media for a reason.

That’s it

I am sure that you will have many other useful techniques in surviving Twitter or Facebook. For some of you that will be walking away permanently but if you are considering that, ask yourself what you take away from that platform when you leave? I am sure the people who follow you (unless they have “I_FOLLOW_BACK” in their username) are interested in your posts for a reason. So if you are consieering closing your account – wait. Try step 1 above for a week or two and then consider the others if/when you return.

Something came up in my twitter feed today which I had solved a while ago and – because the solution doesn’t fit very well into 140 characters – I thought I’d share it here.

WordPress allows for indented paragraphs within it’s usual editor but not for a single line. Well you can use the “Preformatted” formatting option in the visual editor but that will change the font and appearance of your text as well. I’m presuming this is not what you want. Within the visual editor there is no easy way to have a single line indent. Thus you can have this:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin, ball tip ham bresaola chuck short loin venison corned beef filet mignon bacon. Meatball cow corned beef meatloaf. Shankle jerky andouille strip steak. Swine shoulder rump spare ribs corned beef, short loin andouille tri-tip jowl leberkas hamburger drumstick.

But not this:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.
Ball tip ham bresaola chuck short loin venison corned beef filet mignon bacon.
Meatball cow corned beef meatloaf. Shankle jerky andouille strip steak.
Swine shoulder rump spare ribs corned beef, short loin andouille tri-tip jowl leberkas hamburger drumstick.

Wait..what?”

“Hang on?” I hear you say, I just said you can’t do that and yet I have – er – done it. Okay you can achieve it in WordPress but not with the standard editor in visual mode. The trick is to wrap a small bit of html code around the line you want to indent. In this case the first line in the above paragraph actually looks like this…

<span style=”padding-left: 1em;”>Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.</span>

The “padding-left:  1em;” bit is where you set the width of the indent. I have used an “em” measurement which is a printers term equivalent to the width of the “m” character is the current typeface/font. You can also specify the indent in “px” (pixels) or “pt” (points). Don’t forget the quotes though. Oh and you must put the editor into HTML mode to add the styling code. To do this simply edit your post and click the HTML tab at the top left. Here’s some examples of using different units of measurement..

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 10px
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 2em
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 5pt

Keeping it consistent

Now it’s quite possible that you will always want the indent the same size when you come to use it. That’s where stylesheets come in. Instead of specifying the indent width each time you can just refer to a “class” which is defined in your theme’s stylesheet. That way if you ever need to change the indent across all the instances where it is specified in your blog, you can just change your stylesheet and voila!

To do this you use the following code where you want an indent..

<span class=”myindent”>Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.</span>

Now we add the class to the stylesheet. In your WordPress dashboard, click Appearance->Editor. It should open your stylesheet(css) for editing but if not just click the relevant css file from the right hand list. Now add the following to the bottom of the file and click Update.

.myindent { padding-left: 1em; }

Note the fullstop at the beginning of that line. Again you can alter the padding specified as before. In my theme this gives you …

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.

Hope this helps.

By the way if you are wondering where all the meaty references came from. It’s from the excellent [Bacom ipsum](http://baconipsum.com/).

Occasionally I wander over to bash.org to view the IRC quotes[1]. I found this one in the top 100 and it was too good not to repeat.

# Rabidplaybunny87: Okay, so my neighbors officially hate me
# GarbageStan23: why?
# Rabidplaybunny87: Well, me, david and andrew were having a bonfire in the backyard, and we were making s’mores and all… and suddenly we here sirens, and see a firetruck turn into the street in front of us.
# Rabidplaybunny87: So we all went running to see what was up, and our neigbor’s house was on fire!
# GarbageStan23: oh ****!
# Rabidplaybunny87: Yeah, and when we got there, the wife was crying into her husbands arms, and we were just kinda standing there, and then she saw us, and then like for 10 seconds, gave us the dirtiest look ever
# Rabidplaybunny87: Turns out, we were still holding our sticks with marshmallows on it, watching the fire….
# Rabidplaybunny87: talk about bad timing…

Original quote on bash.org

[1] For those who don’t know, IRC = Internet Relay Chat, so these are quotes from various chat rooms around the Internet.

In New Zealand a new law is about to be passed. Under Section92A, any internet user can have their connection cut off if the givernment suspects they’ve been infringing copyright. No proof, no evidence, no day in court. It becomes law on Feb 28.

Across the web people are mounting a blackout campaign – Twitter, Facebook and other profile pictures are being replaced by a black square and bloggers are getting in on the act as well.

I, for one, am glad to join their ranks. Lot’s of people infringe copyright and it’s wrong but to be found guilty by accusation is worse. As a Christian, a web-user and a producer of artwork – I find this law disturbing and immoral.