
The Ethics of Cookies

For this blog, I’m going to share some of my own advice that have helped me be successful in building a following. By following, I don’t mean that I’m famous. What I feel I’ve been really effective at doing though, is using social media as a means of personal branding. In my opinion, social can be used as a means of reinforcing your views and passions, and creating points of conversations between yourself and your network. Here’s how I do things. I thought I’d share!
Earlier in October, Youtube launched a new service called YouTube Red, a paid subscription service where for $9.99, U.S. viewers can watch all of YouTube’s content ad-free, play videos while using other phone apps, and save videos for offline play.
Snapchat began in 2011 as the cute app that you can use to take silly photos of yourself and send it to your friends with a “self-destruct” timer at the end of it. Fast forward to 2015, and it continues to take the world by storm, having a strong presence in North America in the UK, and having been taken on by businesses such as Apple Music and Burberry to give a different perspective on their brands. Snapchat is being adopted by more and more people nowadays. Here are my thoughts on why its becoming so popular.
In the age of the smartphone, the notion of the #selfie is becoming increasingly ingrained in our culture. Human beings are rather self centered creatures by nature, and the provision of a front facing camera definitely satisfied an important need: the need to take photos of oneself. Since Snapchat is all about making faces, and showing the world what you are up to from a first person perspective, its logical that many people would hop on board.
Secondly, I believe that Snapchat enables individuals to more easily share specific types of media with select friends. With other social media platforms such as Facebook becoming populated with an older demographic, younger social media users are seeking other methods to share with friends, without their parents knowing.
Like with all social media platforms, it is always an uphill battle to stay relevant with modern customers. It will be interesting to see how Snapchat can continue to innovate and grow.
Last week, Facebook announced that they would be commencing tests on their new ‘reactions’ interface, which is designed so people can express a more diverse range of emotions than just “liking” the post. Facebook is beginning real world testing in Ireland
and Spain, and if successful, will be releasing it to the rest of the world.
Social media has become society’s most popular medium for self expression. My goal today is to address the issue of “social media vs. reality”. All stuff we post on social media today is enhanced to portray an almost surreal image of our lives to others. Is this ethical?
In my opinion, social media posts that showcase who you are as a person are acceptable. However, if your social media posts are ever false, or are posted with the intent of belittling another party, then you should refrain from posting.
To put this into perspective and argue my point, I’m going to relate posting on social media to wearing clothes. What sort of clothing you wear portrays the type of person you are. The sort of clothing you wear also depends on the occasion, and it is socially acceptable to dress up or down depending on your situation. Similarly, it is acceptable to portray your personal brand, and what you stand for on social media.
On a regular day, you would put on in clothing that you consider acceptable to be walking around in society with. For a special occasion such as a first date, you would probably dress up a little nicer to impress the person you are going to dinner with. When you are staying in on a lazy Sunday, comfort takes priority, and you wouldn’t really care so much about what you throw on.
Similarly, the stuff you put on your social media channels varies depending on mood and occasion; in my opinion, posting content which is true to the person that you are is completely acceptable! On a regular day, you may post a picture of the Tim Hortons breakfast you grab on the way to work. For a special occasion, you may post a photo of the fabulous meal you are having at the Hotel Georgia. When you are staying in on a lazy Sunday, comfort takes priority, and you may not post anything at all. Well, because you’re lazy.
The only times i believe that social media posts are unacceptable are when the posts are contrary to what is actually true, or are made with the sole intention of belittling others. For these cases, it’s definitely up to the poster to be conscious of the exact intentions behind their actions.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and am definitely open to other’s opinions. If you have any comments or opinions you think might lead to valuable discussion, please feel free to comment or shoot me a tweet! Thanks for reading
inspired by the article “This is How People Lie About Their Lives on Instagram” –> http://bit.ly/1MtNB1C