So to prep for this blog post I decided to post a question on two of my Twitter accounts CrazyMikesapps asking “what is honesty.” I got only one question, but no answers. Is that surprising? Does honesty mean different things to different people? Probably. So not to get too morally righteous, but honesty to me is telling the truth. The truth would be reality, what really happened as opposed to what did not happen or made up excuses.
As I spend more time blogging, Tweeting, posting Facebook updates, I readily see that people do not want to communicate with someone who appears to be fake, dishonest, or a narcissist. One of the fundamental characteristics of social media is transparency, which one could equate to honesty. People want to share their life experiences, but they don’t want to share them with a 54 year old pervert who has a Facebook picture of a twenty year old girl and communicates as such. That is just plain creepy. So ask that person you are communicating with through social media some basic questions. Like what they like to do, what they like to eat, what year were they were born, etc, and do this quickly. If they provided weird answers, or they provide unreasonable delays in answering then maybe you should consider who you are communicating with. Consider they are not who they say they are.
When it comes to social media one who is dishonest can only hide for so long. Bloggers call it the way they see it and if a blogger provides wrong or discrepant information the pack tends to right itself. People unfollow, weirdos, or those who have proven to be untrusted. That is what I love about social media and the honesty that comes from this forum. Not to get political, but from Bill Clinton to George Bush there is this belief that lying is acceptable in a sense by people on both sides of the political spectrum, which is nonsense. Lying is never acceptable and I don’t try to foster some “greater than though” moral righteousness. I have lied and probably will lie again, but that is not the point. The point is a true sense of honesty is alive and kicking in social media websites where millions of people are having conversations.
Who would have thought that “social media” websites would be the catharsis for honesty, not me. Not to be naive, I realize there is plenty of dishonesty on the web, but if you pay attention you can ferret out the dishonest, but you must pay attention. People want honesty. They want truth, they want to feel like they are actually being told something that is not a fairy tale. Take 5 minutes and look at Mashable the social media website for case studies in social media success by corporations. The corporations that are winning at social media are those that are engaging their consumers with a funny little thing called “honesty.”
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