You’re entitled to your opinions. It’s okay that you have strong political leanings in some direction. You might even believe that it’s your duty and responsibility to share your opinions with the rest of us. But you might do well to consider whether social media is the right forum for sharing those strong political opinions.

You are leaving a wake of trail of negativity behind you. And when someone does try to discern who you really are by looking at your social media presence, they’re going to find a long trail of divisiveness and negativity.

How Do You Want to Be Known?

Your social media presence is a representation of who you are. It’s your digital surrogate.

If you post interesting, educational, uplifting, enlightening, and value creating content, you will be known as a positive person with good ideas. The power of social media is that it helps you to build a strong personal brand.

But if instead of posting things that are positive you post negative, divisive, scarcity-minded political content, you are going to be known as being a petty, partisan, biased, and negative person. Now, you don’t have to like the fact that half or more of the people that look at your social media presence find you offensive, but that won’t stop them from making a judgement about who you are and what you stand for.

Social Media: It’s Forever

You are leaving a long trail behind you. The content you create, the comments that you leave, and the posts and pictures you share are stacked up behind you. It’s a trail that anyone can follow. That trail provides them with a picture of who they are going to find when they reach the trail’s end. Many will discover the clues you’ve left, decide you are an adversarial, argumentative, negative person, and they’ll simply step off the trail.

Choose carefully what the trail you are leaving behind you represents. Does it represent your biggest and best self? Or does it represent something less than that?

Questions

How do you judge people who’s entire social media stream is partisan politics?

Better still, what judgment do you make about people with a social media trail of harsh political pictures and quotes that are exactly opposite to what you believe?

What does the trail you’re leaving behind say about you? Is that what you want it to say?