crosberg

mknell:

caro:

mikehudack:

hragv:

I’ve been thinking a lot about Foursquare recently and wondering why I don’t check-in much anymore. I’m not sure why.

Mom, don’t read this post.

I work in online marketing and it’s no secret that I actively blog, tweet and check in on Foursquare. It’s not just my profession - it’s fun. Social media is largely responsible for some of my closest friendships. I’ve never felt unsafe participating and generally…

This is a weird cautionary tale indeed, and if anyone is concerned about the same thing happening to them, Foursquare lets you disable the option to display your name and avatar on the main page for the venue you’ve just checked into. Go to your settings and un-check “Show my name in the ‘Who’s here’ list in the application and in my friends’ check-ins sent to twitter.”  Done.

Usually there are refreshing, non-alarmist solutions to these things.  And when there aren’t, there should be.

I’m reblogging this for a very specific reason: I have met some of my very best and closest friends in the entire world online long before I met them in person.  But when I did meet them in person I met it well-lit public places, usually with a buddy (or two, shout out to Chase and Brandon here for being my intrepid back up many times).  If people are really surprised to see me check in at Aircell (where I work) or think they can hurt me if they come to the Jimmy John’s where I’m eating lunch at 12:30 surrounded by buckets of other people…I’m not sure they have enough functioning braincells to manage that.

As said above, there are privacy settings for all of these social “games.”  I don’t ignore them.  I also don’t fear the “online stranger.”  People suck, no matter if they suck on the web or the suck in real life.  You shouldn’t walk into dark alleys with your headphones blasting Miley Cyrus into your brain loud enough for other people to hear (for many reasons).  But if I hadn’t taken a leap of faith (a smart, thought out, backup-plan-riddled one) I wouldn’t have met TAB (the awesome boyfriend), John, Jessi, Matt, the TechKaraoke crowd, awesome folks at SxSW, etc.

I like the end of Shea’s latest blog post: “And don’t let the bad guys win.”  This means not letting them do you physical harm.  But more importantly it means not letting them scare you into living in a bubble.