Social Media Cautions

by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com

Social Media. Two words that can make you feel better or worse about your life, or your virtual life, and how you are perceived.

It’s easy to look at the posts showing fancy cars or clothes or the luxury life that influencers boast about. Most often, truth isn’t represented by those people. Instead, what you see is the “truth” they want to project, which can be far from reality.

Remember that these influencers are in a race for the most outrageous types of posts in order to attract attention and get more followers. The more followers they get, the more money they make from advertisers and product endorsements.

I’ve simplified that formula, but what’s most important to remember is that the content of a video or post is not necessarily truthful or authentic.

Going further, look at recent times and consider how celebrities or other rich-and-famous people share their thoughts on topics…or do they dare? After all, doing so can be dangerous. They risk losing a portion of their audience if they take a position contrary to what their followers believe or expect. Not taking a position makes a statement that can be harmful, too.

Let’s not forget that not all posts are actually generated by the person or entity they purport to be. There can be all kinds of false narrative posts about celebrities and their opinions that will make them look bad. And with AI, it’s harder to tell what is real and what the truth is.

So, what is your online presence looking like? With all that can go wrong in a social media presence, it’s still important for people and businesses to have and engage with social media accounts. But it’s important to manage that responsibly and remember that our personal and professional presence should not be considered controversial or offensive.

Many people will search your online history to see what you think about the world. Like it or not, it’s all up there, recorded and preserved to be forever seen and shared. True or not, it’s public.

If you search for yourself, you might be surprised to see what content is online. If this isn’t already your practice, I would suggest you only post content you intentionally want to share with the world. Just think about it: A whole new profession exists of people to manage your social media accounts and online reputation, using tools to do damage control when that becomes necessary.

So remember, those seemingly innocent posts may be used against you or your business by a competitor. In other words, be careful about what you post!

With that, I would like to wish all of RePlay’s readers a wonderful Holiday Season and a very happy and healthy New Year.

Jack Guarnieri started servicing electro-mechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].