At the beginning of one of my classes today, I pulled up an offensive Facebook posting, did a screen capture of it, and went to the person’s employer’s Facebook page; a page for which he had conveniently provided the link for me to use. So that I would not accidentally send the message, I switched to a word document instead of writing the following on the employer’s page: “Are you aware that [name deleted], one of your employees, is making offensive posts on Facebook?” I then attached the screen capture and said, “Post.”

I think that students were impressed that in less than five minutes I could have shared some pretty nasty stuff with a stranger’s employer; a stranger I had not heard of until 16 hours before I did the demonstration. I also pointed out that, even if the person deleted his offensive posting, he had already lost control of the content because I have the screen capture.

As Judge Marilyn advices on The People’s Court: “Say it; forget it. Write it; regret it.”

Think before you post.

–Steven L. Berg, PhD