I've been, like many people I am sure, told countless times that the internet is a dangerous place. Apparently the only people that are online, are killers that want to strangle you in your sleep. Therefore, the worst thing you could possibly do is put out any of your personal information publicly on the web.
Hiding it in facebook where only your friends can see it is one thing, but actually making your address or your phone number public for all to see is a hideously bad idea. End of story.
Or so I was told.
Anyways, so I was sitting around on twitter, thinking about how many cool people I've met thanks to social media, when an idea hit me. I decided to post my personal phone number online.
What possessed me to do that? Well, I really just wanted to see two things. How many people would call me, and WHO would call me.
At the time I had 416 followers. Let's say only 40 of them actually read that post. Based on those numbers, I expected a few random texts, mostly from local people.
The results?
I recieved text messages from five people, and one very lovely phone call from Puerto Rico. That's about it.
No messages from crazy people. No phonecalls from anyone I didn't know, or wouldn't have loved to hear from.
I think this represents the changing nature of the web. In the past, doing this may have illicited an un-desirable response. But now that literally everyone is online, we've in a sense, drowned out the wierdos.
In a sense we've flooded the internet with authenticity, so that doing things like posting your phone number online, is now kinda sorta safe.
Safe, isn't the best word. But I think you catch my drift. Anyways, something to think on for now.
So...What do you think? Would you ever consider doing something like this? Why/Why not?
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3 comments:
I'm not a big phone person at all, and I already get too many phone calls at home. I'd rather not invite calls to my cell phone unless I have to. What you did was certainly a bold experiment. My number is on facebook for all friends to see, so if there's a Twitterer I'd like to contact, I'd invite them to befriend me there (or I'll just DM my number to them).
Thanks for the comment!
I think I was in a good position to be able to do this. I really don't get that many calls/texts in a day, nor do I have thousands of followers that could have resulted in hundreds of texts.
I mean yeah, I totally understand not wanting to share your number publicly, and DM-ing people is usually the way to go. But my problem with that is, I need a REASON to give out/request numbers.
Conversely, when I text people, I rarely have a reason. I just want to to talk!
Anyways, just some additional thoughts.
Thanks again for the comment!
A long time ago, when I used to be a "design celebrity" in the "girl domain scene" before my birthday would come I would post my address and phone number on my website for all to see so they could send me presents and cards.
well i received a lot of presents, cards and letters and mostly written in the cards and letters were: omg, you are so crazy. one of your fans are going to end up on your doorstep and possibly kill you.
which never happened. the internet was just made out to be big and scary because it was something that was still unknown. now everyone is on here and everyone knows what its about.
not going to lie, i was a bit shocked when you twittered your number because you have a lot of followers. lol
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