Mom v. Twitter
So, I think I mentioned a while ago that Mom was using Twitter, and that this fact kinda weirded me out. I think it was a couple of things: 1) I've always been the one interested in social networking (before there was an actual term for it and you could only use a few programs like AOL to do it), and 2) that meant that she could read what I was thinking on a moment to moment basis.
She set up her account with her usual handle, and then had no idea how to go from there. I ended up having to give her a Twitter 101 course so she would know what to do and how to deal with stuff. She had two followers as of 48 hours from starting up... Me, and Robert Sean Leonard. She bragged about that for a while. Then, a couple of days after that, she started complaining about the other people she didn't know following her. Some were porn bots (you can usually tell them because they have either girls in skimpy outfits in "sexy" poses or outright explicit images as their pictures), and others were just random people who noticed something interesting of hers and decided to follow her. This freaked her out, for some reason, having people she didn't know reading her tweets. I decided not to mention that RSL doesn't know her either, and technically falls into that category, too.
The final straw in Mom's decision to rid herself of Twitter about 2 weeks after setting it up was the "threat" the head of nursing gave during a meeting... basically that they were "scanning" Twitter and Facebook (how they can scan facebook, I don't really know, but okay) for people saying nasty things about her place of business, and any employee caught complaining about the job on one of these sites would be subject to disciplinary action. Naturally, this freaked Mom out. She still can't quite grasp the utter size of the internet and how small her personal share in that is (I already proved that nothing either Sis or I write shows up about her because Sis's is on Facebook and therefore unsearchable, and my Twitter/LJ posts never mention her by anything other than Mom). I explained that they were probably searching Twitter by the name of the hospital, and as long as she hasn't mentioned anywhere where exactly she works, then she's safe. But she's very scared that someone will find the one tweet she made about a training session being long and boring and BOOM! Fired. She thinks that the one whoever they have monitoring this will somehow figure out her handle. I told her that she needed to think up some new handle if she wanted to remain anonymous on sites like these (like mine... which has some very vague connection to me, but otherwise is not traceable back to me). She then mentioned that she was afraid if she did that, then no one she knew would be able to find her. "Which is what an e-mail saying, 'Hey, you can find me on twitter at _______,' comes in, Mom." She decided it was too much of a hassle, so we just deleted her account instead.
So now she doesn't have to worry that the internet police will somehow figure out that she doesn't like her job, and doesn't have to worry that strangers are reading her posts. I like knowing that I can bitch about her again and not worry that she's reading it. I just have to keep reminding myself that the computer was a room-size thing that ran on punch cards and vacuum tubes WHEN SHE WAS IN COLLEGE. That cell phones and being available any time is a weird concept to her in general.
What's interesting is that she likes Facebook. Mainly because she knows everyone that she follows and that follow her back. She just started being followed by one of my cousin's cousin's family... that weirded her out a bit. "But I don't know who the hell this person is!" "But he's distantly related by marriage... and obviously kinda knows about you." "It's still weird to me."
There are times I love my mom for being weird, and times when it becomes really annoying.
She set up her account with her usual handle, and then had no idea how to go from there. I ended up having to give her a Twitter 101 course so she would know what to do and how to deal with stuff. She had two followers as of 48 hours from starting up... Me, and Robert Sean Leonard. She bragged about that for a while. Then, a couple of days after that, she started complaining about the other people she didn't know following her. Some were porn bots (you can usually tell them because they have either girls in skimpy outfits in "sexy" poses or outright explicit images as their pictures), and others were just random people who noticed something interesting of hers and decided to follow her. This freaked her out, for some reason, having people she didn't know reading her tweets. I decided not to mention that RSL doesn't know her either, and technically falls into that category, too.
The final straw in Mom's decision to rid herself of Twitter about 2 weeks after setting it up was the "threat" the head of nursing gave during a meeting... basically that they were "scanning" Twitter and Facebook (how they can scan facebook, I don't really know, but okay) for people saying nasty things about her place of business, and any employee caught complaining about the job on one of these sites would be subject to disciplinary action. Naturally, this freaked Mom out. She still can't quite grasp the utter size of the internet and how small her personal share in that is (I already proved that nothing either Sis or I write shows up about her because Sis's is on Facebook and therefore unsearchable, and my Twitter/LJ posts never mention her by anything other than Mom). I explained that they were probably searching Twitter by the name of the hospital, and as long as she hasn't mentioned anywhere where exactly she works, then she's safe. But she's very scared that someone will find the one tweet she made about a training session being long and boring and BOOM! Fired. She thinks that the one whoever they have monitoring this will somehow figure out her handle. I told her that she needed to think up some new handle if she wanted to remain anonymous on sites like these (like mine... which has some very vague connection to me, but otherwise is not traceable back to me). She then mentioned that she was afraid if she did that, then no one she knew would be able to find her. "Which is what an e-mail saying, 'Hey, you can find me on twitter at _______,' comes in, Mom." She decided it was too much of a hassle, so we just deleted her account instead.
So now she doesn't have to worry that the internet police will somehow figure out that she doesn't like her job, and doesn't have to worry that strangers are reading her posts. I like knowing that I can bitch about her again and not worry that she's reading it. I just have to keep reminding myself that the computer was a room-size thing that ran on punch cards and vacuum tubes WHEN SHE WAS IN COLLEGE. That cell phones and being available any time is a weird concept to her in general.
What's interesting is that she likes Facebook. Mainly because she knows everyone that she follows and that follow her back. She just started being followed by one of my cousin's cousin's family... that weirded her out a bit. "But I don't know who the hell this person is!" "But he's distantly related by marriage... and obviously kinda knows about you." "It's still weird to me."
There are times I love my mom for being weird, and times when it becomes really annoying.