When it comes to social media, I don’t think anyone can speak freely. Sad, but true. At the end of the day you don’t know what you will want to pursue in life and you don’t know what will haunt you. While you may not think you have any political aspirations and that you can do whatever you want, what about a spouse or a child you may have in the future? I may not want to be in politics currently, but if my children want to be, I should keep in mind that was is on the internet lives forever. For that matter, maybe as a parent I should think before posting a ton of pictures of my children doing awkward things.
When it comes to celebrities and what they post, I think that they should keep in mind what they are doing, but I think most of them think they are above it. Celebrities post all the time about fighting with other celebrities or what they think politically, which I think is fine, but sometimes I think that they should show more sense. However, at the time, when people post they think they are funny or interesting or talking to someone and don’t realize that everything stays online forever.
I don’t think that people mean to post without thinking, I think people get caught up in the moment. I also think that it is easy to do so! You experience something cool, such as going to a lazer tag game and you end up posting a picture with a gun. Later on in life you decide to run for common council, and all of a sudden whether or not you are for or against guns becomes a question. When people post online they don’t usually go into thinking that they will over share, but it does happen sometimes, to all of us. We are human, which makes it easy to accidentally go too far.
The one good thing about being human, is that everyone else is too and can usually forgive a mistake that is not too egregious. While there are some limits, and you may ruin your reputation a little bit, when you do make a mistake, the only way to handle it is to apologize.
Amanda Cavanagh the Social Media Maven 
Celebrities can get away with things more than us mere mortals because they have a large publicity machine supporting them, we however need to focus on our customer such as the reader or become as dead as the Dodo.
Hey Alex,
You make an interesting point about celebrities having a publicity machine to support them, however I would say that when they screw up more people are aware of it. If I post something that isn’t politically correct, people might call me out on it, but it most likely won’t be posted on CNN. You are right though, if people don’t like what we are posting, without a fan base, we will easily be dead in the water and would get no traction. Thanks for commenting!
I think this is a very intelligent response to the final lecture Amanda. Well done!
Thank you! 🙂