Whether we love it or hate it, the majority of us can agree that we can't do without it. It isn't sex, it isn't drugs, but it's equally as addictive. The ever-expanding world of social media, ie Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, and even Blackberry messenger (bbm) exposes us to a world without limit, where every thought, action and event becomes important because we say it is. However, as sensational as these social media sites appear, there are still some issues that we would rather not exist. To figure out these faults though, we went directly to the source, and engaged social media users to discover eight things that annoyed "Trinis" the most about social media interaction.
1 People who use names that couldn't possibly be real, eg Tinesha "Niki Minaj" Stuart, or this mouthful of a Facebook profile name, MzzSineadThompson-loves-u-real-bad-and-I-know-you-do-too-so-why-don't-both-of-us-stop-playing. Using your real name, like being yourself, seems to be a thing of the past. Like celebrities, everyone wants to have an alias.
2 Profile messages and statuses give us free license to tell the world, or at least our social media world, all of our business. Most people agreed that using statuses to share personal business was unnecessarily annoying. As one respondent said, "Unless you're a movie star or a Carib girl, I don't need an update on what you are doing every five minutes."
3 For the Blackberry Messenger (bbm) addicts, the only thing more annoying than the constant status updates are the constant meaningless broadcasts. Broadcasts are to the bbm world what forwards are to e-mail. They can sometimes be cute, but it's like a flesh eating disease. Nobody wants one.
4 Anybody who has an e-mail address has to deal with that constant irritation called Spam. However, social media, especially Facebook takes it to a whole new level. Facebook Spam tends to take over about 80 per cent of notifications. Whether it's game requests, event invites from promoters, or random video posts, we usually have to swim through tons of Spam before we can get to the important stuff.
5 The unnecessary tagging in photos, posts and statuses have made the social media experience tedious. One of the most annoying things about social media, according to users, is being tagged in photos that has absolutely nothing to do with them.
5 As if it isn't enough that social media allows others to be in our faces 24 hours a day, it seems that people require even more attention. This often comes in the form of poking, pinging or nudging. It's like a red flag that screams "look at me, look at me!" and serves no purpose other than shaking up our screens in a forceful demand for attention.
6 Social media networks allow people to view your personal information whenever they want. As Trinis, we all succumb to the occasional desire to mind each other's business. The constant "macos" who are always on our profiles, trying to be in our business and our pictures, and spying on what outfits we wore at which party. Social media has made everyone the recipient of gossip and spying usually reserved for celebrities.
7 For Web sites like Facebook, Tagged and MySpace, stalking has become commonplace. Social media stalkers include people who constantly comment on, or "like" every single picture you post, and those who add all your friends just to have mutual contacts. This can be taken even further in the bbm world, as the Google Map application allows friends to see exactly where you are at all times.
8 But while there are a lot of little things that will always annoy us about social media Web sites, with more than 700 million Facebook users, and some of the most powerful people in the world "tweeting" daily, the annoyances don't seem to be enough to drive users away.