Social Media Etiquette for the Typically Sarcastic, Snarky or Rude

Social media can be tricky at times for people who are constantly making sarcastic remarks, snarky comments, or are just plain rude to everyone. Though they say old habits die hard, it’s important to stay away from such remarks on the Internet, since it’s often hard to find the humor in the comments when just reading online.

Oh that’s a great idea…

The classic eye roll sarcastic comment is part of my everyday life, and I’m sure some of yours as well. Though it’s fun to joke around with some people’s misfortunate spoken ideas (especially when they just don’t understand sarcasm at all), these jokes don’t go over well on the Internet where facial expressions can’t be conveyed.

Rather than being funny, you’ll probably either be: 1) seen as agreeing with or congratulating an idea that is truly horrible and be labeled as someone who comes up with horrible ideas themselves, or 2) you’ll be seen as completely rude and unhelpful. Clearly, these are two categories you don’t want to fall under, so the best advice you can heed to is avoiding such sarcasm in your tweets and Facebook updates. Just because it’s blatantly obvious to you doesn’t mean the rest of the World Wide Web will understand the humor.

Why don’t you Google it?

When it comes to Twitter and Facebook, users are often asking their friends and followers for help in all sorts of areas. An appropriate response, should you choose to respond, is to give some tips or perhaps provide a website or article of sorts that can answer their question and beyond.  Don’t ever be the person who replies with something like “Look it up yourself” or “Why don’t you Google it?” Of course they can, likely, look up articles themselves for whatever inquiry they have, but they’re asking for help for a reason. Maybe they don’t have the time, or aren’t good with online searches. Whatever the case may be, it’s always better to be seen as polite and helpful than rude and uncaring.

Look at this blog post! Does he know English?

Sometimes people post things on the Internet with bad grammar, misspellings, poor sentence structure, etc. Every now and then, we stumble upon these gems and maybe laugh, perhaps sit there in astonishment, or have someone else read what we’ve found. Though these unfortunate blunders for the creator of the post can be more than amusing, it’s important to keep your delight on the down low. Should you tweet or post Facebook updates constantly just making fun of every poorly written article or nonsensical post you find, you’ll come off as funny to some people, but mostly just rude. Not everyone is an excellent writer or capable of expressing their thoughts clearly, but that doesn’t give you the right to embarrass them further and make fun of their every mistake. I suggest you keep these amusing misgivings of others to yourself and stick to posting helpful and grammatically correct articles.

When online, turn off the charm

Though we all know being sarcastic, snarky, rude or what have you is all part of our charming ways, it’s best to dull that side of the personality when networking online. Turn up the helpful, sweet, polite and other charming personality traits you have. Leave out the bitter comments on people’s not so wonderful articles and don’t tell people to just find the answers to their questions themselves, and you’ll be just fine, albeit slightly less interesting.