Things You're Doing On Your Social Media Channels (That Are Driving Me Nuts)
It's a free internet and you can do whatever you damn well please on your social media. You don't have to listen to me; you can continue annoying anyone who hasn't finally just gotten around to unfollowing you yet.
Your profile picture should feature you. It can be you alone or with others. It may also feature your beloved pet or douchey vehicle, but you have to be in it too.
Do not post any text long enough to merit a "Keep Reading" cut. If your status update is more than three-to-four sentences, it is too deep, fam. Facebook is just not the place to bare your soul, no matter how sincere you are trying to be. Do you really want all the people you met at that one thing you went to a few years back, friended and then never spoke to again to read your paragraphs-long write up about your most recent existential crisis, then continue scrolling to see one of those mesmerizing Tasty videos and promptly forget about it? Save it for your blog, or better yet, a conversation with a few close friends after you've all gotten wine drunk.
Note the names of the pages you're sharing things from. Are you sharing photos or videos from a page named "Looks Like Mama's Having Another Hot Flash" or the "Midwest Skinheads Association"? And are you really okay with what that says about you?
If you are updating your status daily (or more frequently) on a regular basis, don't. It's nice to give people the illusion that you have better things to do.
Do not be the person who only takes to Twitter when sad or mad. You know who you are, and you need to quit it. I don't want to see your "Alone again :( I guess everyone leaves eventually"s or your "When someone stabs you in the back <<<<<"s and all your other subtweets. It makes you look immature and makes me think you deserve all the loneliness and betrayal the world has seen fit to inflict upon you.
I swear to God if you retweet another Vine video we are done here. DONE, do you hear me?
Pace yourself. Maybe you've spent the last couple months forgetting you ever had a Twitter, but reappearing to tweet five times in an hour span after your social media amnesia wears off is really irritating. Consistency is key.
You don't need to hashtag everything in the photo. I promise! About three hashtags should suffice. EXCEPTION: If your account is partially for promotion purposes and you're trying to get noticed for your fitness/art/music/style, etc. stuff. But in that case, it's just common courtesy to put that stuff a few returns below the caption or in a comment.
Less is more. Aesthetic is the whole point of Instagram, so I would really appreciate it if you tried to apply some artistry to your photos. But not too much. Edit your photo enough that we can tell, but not so much that you couldn't use #nofilter and not get called out.
Stagger the release of your photos. I don't want to see 15 photos of your latest trip or night out on the town in a row on my feed. #latergram exists for a reason.
There it is, folks. Real lessons on social media literacy from a real millennial! Now go forth and stop making me cringe.