After an interesting development this evening, I started thinking about the possibility of someone in our generation lying about their whereabouts and what they are doing on any given evening. For people our age (Generation Millenial or whatever we are known as), every aspect of our lives is documented through social media, whether we like it or not.
I like to think I have control over what I broadcast about myself over the internet but I know that really isn’t the case. I choose when to check in on FourSquare and what to mupload to Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram/ etc. My accounts are followed by fellow professionals, coworkers and most importantly, my mother. Just as I tried to make sure want professors in college didn’t know if I had gone out the night before their class (damn you insufferable bar stamps), I am becoming more proactive about what and how I say via the internet.
So what happens when we tell a person we will be some place (like at home for the night), we purposely do not check in or tweet or post about our location, and then someone else tags us at a bar or out galavanting somewhere downtown. Wham. Right there on creepy feed, Mark Zuckerberg blowing up our spot. Definitely not streaming Netflix but instead out for a night on the town. Dirty little secrets aired to the public, All American Rejects style.
When public check-ins were becoming more popular, stories stated to hit the news about wives catching their husbands in affairs. The men were tagged in places nowhere near their homes or offices after telling their wives they were working late. Even if they were covering their tracks, a buddy could have checked them in at a sports bar or a strip club or anywhere they weren’t supposed to be, without even realizing the potential disasters. Like any tech-savvy person, the immediate next step was to start lying and checking in places they clearly weren’t.
Let’s ignore the bigger issue of people having to lie to their significant others. What is the appropriate course of action for us to take when we catch someone in this lie? Are we allowed to saw a person wasn’t where he or she claimed to be because a photo on our newsfeed said so? Or is that consider “stalking?”
For now, I would like to think I took the mature road by not posting a snarky comment on the photo that popped up on my mind, even though I clearly caught this person in a lie. My reaction was much more adult-like and sophisticated.
Grab a tissue for this one. Less than 100 days until the London 2012 Summer Olympics kick off and Procter & Gamble kicked it off with this amazing “Thank You, Mom” advertising campaign.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to share a name with a superstar? Here, we follow an ordinary man who has been saddled with a legendary name. It’s not crazy, it’s sports.”
Already watched it three times. I want to hug this guy and he isn’t even real.
If I had to sit down and write out my thoughts of entry-level life in a public relations agency, it would look like this.
“About one week into my job, I wondered if I oversold myself during my interviews. I’m not saying I lied—no one should ever lie in an interview—but I had to question if I made it clear that I had zero PR experience when I landed my first position at a PR agency in August.
I took the advertising and PR classes in college, toiled at the obligatory unpaid internships in marketing and promotions and gained more than two years of marketing experience after graduation. With that said, I still didn’t know what a media list or subject matter expert was.
I had a lot to learn, not only about our clients’ businesses, but also the business of PR; I was terrified.
I had more than a few sleepless nights in the beginning, worrying about how I was going to tackle my projects. But in the past six months, I’ve embraced agency life and realized that, when it came to my early fears, there was more than met the eye:”
More info on the author:Heather Sliwinski is an account executive at KemperLesnik, a Chicago-based public relations agency, providing media relations and social media services to a variety of B2B clients. She has held positions in marketing and event planning for corporations, nonprofits and higher education. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications with an emphasis in strategic communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sliwinski is the blog co-chair for the PRSA New Professionals Section. Feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn or Twitter.
A big hat tip to my friend Chase for pointing this adorable April Fool’s joke out to me. He is a huge fan of Warby Parker, the custom eyewear brand that I think is only meant for hipsters. (He is not a hipster by any means). The brand rolled out a custom line for canines yesterday and reintroduced themselves as Warby “Barker.” Love.
And as a true PR person, I am glad to see they got some ink in the Washington Post for their poodle prank!
A must read for anyone who graduated college in the last decade. “The recession didn’t gut the prospects of American people. The Baby Boomers took care of that.”
