Editing Yourself Online

There's one sphere of life that's becoming harder and harder to edit, your online life.

I was rather annoyed to discover several pictures of myself tagged in Facebook photo albums. Although the pictures weren't necessarily compromising, I was still rather annoyed by the fact that somebody else had the ability to dictate how others perceive me online.

There is no longer any effective method to edit yourself on social media networks. It's difficult to edit what others see about you, and even if you were to untag yourself in images, those pictures still float around online for anyone to see.

Your ability to edit yourself, not to mention keep certain aspects of your life private are virtually non-existant. In an article that appeared in the Guardian, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that privacy was no longer a social norm. I believe he might be right.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

We've forgone our ability to edit our online lives, not to mention our privacy the minute we signed up for Facebook.  Although the social media site is a great tool to stay connected with friends and family, the negatives are becoming all to clear. 

Borrow vs Lend

My absolute biggest pet peeve in the English language…

Often, I wish I could edit people’s everyday speech. For the most part, I can let grammatical errors slide, but in some cases I lose my mind.  

Not me, but same reaction... 

No error irritates me more than the improper uses of the words borrow and lend. For whatever reason, I’ve noticed that many don’t know when to use these words properly.  Every time I hear it used improperly, it’s as though somebody is scratching their nails on a chalkboard, or stabbing me in the head. Slight exaggeration, but still, I think you get how much it bugs me.

Improper use:

I borrowed him my books. (Argh!)

You may lend my books. (Double argh!)

Proper use:

I lent him my books. (Yay!)

You may borrow my books. (Double yay!)

I have yet to figure out why these words are so complicated. There are a billion websites dedicated to explaining when you should use either word, yet people still screw these up on a near-constant basis. 

Political Correctness

How editing life to keep things politically correct is ruining everything.

Well, that might be a slight exaggeration...

Pretty soon I won't be able to call him Santa Claus because it might offend somebody... The safer, more PC option is to call him SC. 

I believe there's a difference between editing, and censorship. There are words that can offend, and speech that is hateful. If an editor comes across something like that in print, I think it should be edited to reflect sensitivities. In my opinion, that is the right thing to do, and would be a perfect example of good editing.

Sometimes, however, editing can go too far and turn into unnecessary censorship. In our quest to not offend anybody and keep things as neutral, bland, and politically correct as possible, we end up censoring things that don't need it.

We live in a society whereby - as aptly pointed out in a recent article in The Telegraph - we are constantly "treading on egg shells in (our) desperation not to offend." This extends to such things as trivial as holidays.

At some point in recent years, we quit celebrating Christmas. In our Western society's attempt to avoid alienating non-Christians, we stopped celebrating a "Merry Christmas" (or is it "Merry Xmas" now?), and started celebrating "Happy Holidays." This, in my opinion, is an example of extreme editing, or censorship run amuck.

And there are countless examples of such attempts at keeping things PC and really aren't hard to find. We can't reverse the process, however with a bit of common sense I think it's possible to edit truly offensive things, and leave the rest alone.

I'll end this post with truly unnecessary censorship, courtesy of Jimmy Kimmel.