Be Yourself Online (Unless Yourself is a Jerkwad) by Jody Casella

One of the things I like about interacting on social media is how I don't have to leave the house to participate. I can sit on the couch in my pajamas blearily holding my coffee while I tap out all my sparkly and thoughtful and insightful comments.

Of course, I could just as easily spew idiotic, offensive, or boring blah blah blah kinds of things too.

Authors are encouraged, even expected, to use social media to promote their books. It should go without saying that if you are a writer, representing a book you poured your heart and soul into, and you'd like for readers to find it, and possibly read it, you should be careful not to come off like a Jerkwad.

But here are a few examples of people who did not get this memo (and I am leaving out names and identifying characteristics to protect these poor saps):

• A writer wrote a blog post mocking book reviewers. A book reviewer discovered the post and tweeted the link to all of her book reviewing friends.
• A blogger wrote a "meh" review of a new book. The author's agent called the blogger a curse word in the comment section.
• A writer upset about a negative review bad mouthed the reviewer on a popular book review site prompting the book reviewer to create an Authors Behaving Badly list. 

Gulp.

Be kind, dear writers. Don't say things in the heat of the moment that you might regret later. Of course this applies in the real world too, but it's so much easier to offend a larger number of people in the social media world. Break the rules and the consequences can trail after you forever.

Or maybe not. I was talking about this with my husband the other day and he assured me that at some point, all of this data floating around--silly but adorable kitty pictures and snarky tweets and random photos of you and your dippy ex boyfriend--will be deleted to make room for more recent insulting and/or inane stuff.

I don't believe him.

(I suspect that this kitty will be floating around forever)