Somewhere right now on the internet, at least 25,000 people are blogging, video’ing, Twittering, Facebook’ing, MySpace’ing or whatever other-ing something they really shouldn’t about someone in their social circle. Shortly after what they post these people will encounter the wrath of those they posted about (and probably in less than 24 hours). Nasty emails will be shot back and forth and friendships will be ended.

If you want to avoid internet social mistakes that "deal the drama" as they say, below are my tips for keeping drama at bay.

1. If someone you know does not have a public internet presence, ASK before posting anything about them on the internet.

You attend a party and have a digital camera in tow, so you snap a few pictures. All the pictures are innocent. There’s nothing embarrassing about them whatsoever. You decide to post them to your Flickr account, then email your friends and say, "Hey! Look at all these cool photos I took at the party!"

Chances are you’re going to get some really nasty emails fired back at you in short order demanding that you remove them immediately. Why? Because you didn’t ask to put them on the internet first.

As far as you’re concerned, it’s no big deal. But to others it may be a very, very big deal.

And if you reply to complaints by firing back with, "What’s your problem?", you can count on friendships being broken quickly because of it.

Always ask and save yourself the hassle.

2. Before you post a "rant", understand you may incur the wrath of the internet.

Let’s say for the moment I decided to write a baseless stupid statement such as, "Ford sucks!"

Am I going to get a reaction from this? Yes. I will incur the wrath of the Ford automobile community, called every possible name in 40 different languages and be instantly pegged as a fool for stating such a thing – which I would deserve if I actually meant it.

The internet is full of rants. People sometimes feel the need to just blast away something, be it in written, audio or video form. However what these people don’t understand is that the internet is a social medium and you may get a reaction smacked back at you so hard it’ll make your head spin.

There is this ridiculous belief that you can post anything you want on the internet and that nothing could ever possibly come of it. It’s just the internet, right?

Wait until you stir the hornet’s nest and get back to me on that one. It won’t be pretty.

3. If it’s public, chances are it will be saved before you can hit the delete key and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

Using a reference to tip 1 above, let’s say you complied and decided to remove the photos you took of of the party you went to. Are they gone from the internet at that point? Probably not. You did email all your friends about it, and chances are a few of them saved local copies of those photos. And those friends re-uploaded them elsewhere on the internet. Uh-oh. The damage is done at this point and now it’s out of your control.

Another example: You write a blog ranting about how much you think your job sucks. Like a fool, you mention who you work for, other employees who tick you off and so on. You learn that your boss finds out about this so you immediately delete the post.

Trust me, it’s not gone. He or she saved it. If not the boss, then a co-worker. Possibly several of them. You just gave them all ammunition they can use against you later if you tick them off for whatever reason.

Was that rant worth it? Obviously not.

Always assume anything you post on the internet that can be viewed by others will be saved.

4. Think before you type

You’ve heard this a million times by a million different people. They were all right.

You have the luxury of being able to actually think about what you’re going to post to the internet before it actually happens. It isn’t like when you’re speaking and you blurt something out accidentally.

Here’s my suggestion to those of the "ranty" persuasion: The next time you want to rant about something, be it as a comment, a blog post or your own or otherwise, read it back to yourself out loud before posting it.

When you physically speak what you write before you post, you’ll probably think, "Whoa.. this is really angry. I should probably structure this better." Watch how your commentary drastically improves when you do this. It really does work.

You have the luxury of being able to edit before posting. Use that opportunity.

5. Any attempt by you to be funny will crash and burn if you don’t understand the lack of inflection with written word.

This sounds really technical but it isn’t.

One of the biggest differences between spoken word and written is the lack of inflection.

There is no such thing as inflection with the written word when compared to spoken. This is because spoken uses sound (where the inflection happens) and written uses visual.

The workaround, so to speak, of the lack of inflection in written word is to use punctuation marks, adjusting the style of text and the emoticon.

Examples:

• This is a plain sentence.
• This is emphasized.
• This is directing you to the word boat because it’s bold.
• THIS IS SHOUTING.
• The end of this sentence indicates I am joking! : – )

You get the idea.

And now here’s an example of how you crash and burn unintentionally.

"You’re a dork."

On read, this is insulting and not funny whatsoever. You may have meant it to be funny, but without inflection it come across as a serious statement.

Workaround: "You’re a dork! : – )"

The emoticon, a.k.a. the sideways happy face, in combination with the exclamation point should put the point across that yes, you are joking. I say should because believe it or not, even though the emoticon has been around since September 19, 1982, some people still don’t know it.

In that case, you write:

"You’re a dork! (joking!)"

Yes, very obvious, but sometimes you have to be. Or alternatively, try not to joke to avoid crashing and burning in the first place.

Care to comment?

Experiment with your newfound lack-o’-inflection knowledge by commenting with, "Rich is a dork" the insulting way, or shout it out, "RICH IS A DORK". Or maybe try emphasizing with "RICH IS A DORK"?

Minutes of fun! : – )

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