Paul Boag has just posted a story on Boagworld reminding us of the consequences of off-hand twittering that can be taken out of context.
The gist of it is he was going to a family Christmas dinner, and got stuck on flooded roads along the way. While he was stuck in traffic he tweeted:
This is turning into the journey from hell. Two roads closed because of floods. One road because of an accident.
The area he was driving in was under flash floods at the time, with people evacuated and some needing rescue.
Paul made it to his family dinner however, and sent a tongue-in-cheek tweet saying:
Unfortunately as he was using Brightkite, it included his location, which was wrong - it looked like he was in the middle of nowhere. Add to that his last tweet about the flooded roads, and a concerned follower thought he genuinely needed help.
Cue the fire brigade sending out a couple of engines to help him, and a very embarrased Paul once he realised.
It is a timely reminder to think about context. I often text tongue-in-cheek comments like Paul’s, which can be taken completely out of context if viewed by the wrong person or if they didn’t fully understand the situation. I think the most recent text I sent said “I’m gonna stab [my upstairs neighbour] in the face”, which would look bad for me if someone did actually stab her. (For the record, I’m not going to stab her, but I am going to leave her a passive-aggressive note).
So this is just a reminder to myself to think about context. I’m making it my mission to double check everything I twitter, post, text and say.
Thanks for the lesson Paul!
This post is tagged under: random thoughts
The simple and oft-maligned emoticon could have been effectively used here to indicate that his tweet was not serious.
In tweets, emails, and IMs, two characters - e.g. ;) - can speak volumes.