You are what you post/publish

Image is everything.

Well, not exactly. But in a way, what we wear on our backs, the shoes we walk on, the vehicle we use, or glasses, hats, scarves, watches, mobile phone, and all that somehow wraps our body or part of it affects the way we are perceived by others.

However, when it comes to communicating, all those implements suddenly lose importance, and the degree to which they affect such communication diminishes to become practically zero. Surely you’ve met people that dress with the most expensive garments but their social status; education and culture don’t match the fabrics. And most likely you’ve also met those that dress comfortably and humbly and yet their values, morals, knowledge and everything else surpasses by much the other person’s dressing codes.

What marks a huge difference in the virtual Social Networks and all other ways of communicating through these electronic media is that we have to be precise in our conveying of messages. Here, clothing is optional, and the devices we use don’t show up; they are just a mechanism that allows us to talk to each other.

In these instances, the way we express ourselves is the “clothing”. There are no valid pretexts to demonstrate our education is less than what we really have acquired. Trying our best to use proper capitalization, punctuation, syntax and grammar is the way we really show who we are. The type of words we choose, the way we put one after another, the length of the sentences, whether we ask much or say many things; absolutely all that plays a role in outlining our presence.

I have heard and seen people apologizing or giving excuses for their poor typing, explaining that the way they write words is –according to them- fashionable, or that they use all capitals because that way they would write faster not having to accentuate some words, or that doing it this or that way other people won’t notice they don’t have good typing skills or good enough ways to communicate.

Guess what? Fashion comes and goes, while tradition and manners stay; uppercase-only needs punctuation too; and the people we write to and everybody who can read what we post already knows us, right?

If they are in our acquaintances lists, they know us already: they know who and how we are, and even why we are. So, who are we trying to fool?

The way you express yourself here and everywhere else defines you. It outlines who you are and the type of person you are. In brief, it shows your net worth as a person.

Clothing is optional.