Angela Crocker

Write. Teach. Organize.

Offensive or Sexist Posts: What to Do?

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Heather Kleim from Epic Empire Designs asks:

If someone you follow posts something incredibly offensive & sexist, do you comment? One of the people I follow (a Vancouver news-type tweeter, talking about events and buzz in the city) posted something that infuriated me and was incredibly offensive to women. I emotionally reacted and replied with ‘how to get someone to unfollow you in 1 tweet’ and unfollowed them. Advice or feedback?

Used under Creative Commons License

Thanks for the question, Heather.  I’m sure many folks struggle with that.  Should you put up with offensive, sexist or rude remarks?  I say no.  At the same time, I don’t think it’s worth highlighting  them by giving them any public attention. So, I suggest you simple ignore the comment and unfriend, block or unfollow the offender as appropriate. Call your best friend if you need to vent your frustration but don’t do it in public.

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule.  In some cases, you may want to rise to the defense of  the insulted group, person or brand.  It is much more powerful to have a group of folks outraged by an offensive, sexist or rude comment all taking issue with the offender.  It takes courage to be the first person to speak up and if you’re willing to take the lead on something you feel strongly about then please don’t hesitate. Sometimes, adding your voice of reason is essential for moral justice. 

However, if you are a business owner or in any way a public figure, you must decide to respond in public or in private with your brand in mind. Does the stance you want to take align with your corporate values?  If it doesn’t you risk confusing your clients with content that’s contrary to your mission.  Two areas of particular concern are religion and politics. I always advise keeping these offline as part of your private self.  I’m sure you and your customers can agree that everyone’s entitled to an opinion but that private opinions should stay private so you can get on with the business at hand.

And to help rude-proof the rest of us, I suggest taking CNN’s Andrea Bartz and Brenna Ehrlich’s pledge to avoid digital mistakes in 2011.

TMDMEX5KRE3R

What to do? How to Unhide a True Friend in Facebook

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Oops! You’ve just blocked or hidden a true friend on Facebook. What to do?

First, understand the difference. Did you hide them from the newsfeed or did you block them from their profile page? Both can be fixed but you need to know what you’ve done before you can fix it.

To hide someone, you start by clicking the little “x” next to a status update in the newsfeed and then select “Hide all by Bonnie”, as in the illustration.

To block someone, visit their profile page and look at the bottom of the left hand column. Click on “Report/Block This Person”.

If you’re not sure what you’ve done, try both methods described below to find your friend again.

To unhide someone, navigate to your newsfeed and click on the little triangle next to “Most Recent”. This will drop down a menu that looks something like this:

At the bottom of the list click “Edit Options”. This will pop up a screen that lists all the people and applications you’ve hidden. In this example, you can see I’ve hidden “Bonnie Sainsbury” and 127 apps. (I’ve just hidden Bonnie temporarily to illustrate how this works!).

To unhide a Friend or an application click on the “x” next to their name. Be sure to click save to have your changes take effect.

To unblock someone is a little different. Click on the “Account” button in the top right hand corner of Facebook. Then select privacy settings.

Now, get out your reading glasses and look towards the bottom of the page for a little red symbol and the headline Block Lists. Click on “Edit your lists”.

From this screen you can both block and unblock users. Any friends you’ve blocked will appear in a list under the Name and Email boxes. In the illustration, you’ll see the name Titia Jetten. (Again, just a temporary block to illustrate this lesson!). Click “unblock” next to the friend’s name to finish the task.

What’s a Gravatar?

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Did you know that only 1% of blog visitors take time to leave a comment? If you’re in that 1% you’re well on your way to making new friends in the blogosphere. Not only will the blogger see your smiling face but other visitors to the blog are likely to read your comment as well.

When you leave a comment you usually get to include your name, photo and web address. ( You also have to provide an email address but that’s not for public display.) However, it’s not always easy to see how to add that photo (also known as an avatar). And if you don’t have a photo, you often end up with “grey outline man” or some default robot sketch.

To save you some time, I recommend that you set up a Gravataror globally recognized avatar. By doing so your image will appear automatically next to your comment on blogs that are set-up to recognize Gravatars. There’s no need to fuss about the fancy coding behind the scenes, simply sign up for an account at www.gravatar.com.

Once you’ve logged in, you can upload a photo to Gravatar that will appear whenever you use that email address to comment on a blog. If you have more than one email, you can list them all or you can set up a different photo for each email. I use two Gravatar images – one for my office email and the other for my personal email.

Once you’ve set up your Gravatar, come on back  here and leave a comment test out how it looks. I look forward to seeing your smiling faces soon.