To most people who know me, I’m a busy bee. But somehow, that doesn’t stop me from doing my daily rituals of logging onto facebook, tumblr, twitter, etc. How is that so? What’s so chic about this crazy blogging, social networking… or more so procrasinating?

I think it’s a matter of the ease and casualness that comes with the term. It doesn’t require much effort to just log on (in fact I believe my computer pretty much just keeps me logged in) and I can type away random thoughts. A luring foundation persists from the ease of typing it from my phone even! So in between studying, or when a thought swings by, or when I stumble across a world-proclaiming quote (or just an inspirational one… or just a funny one..), I’d just make a status update, or tweet, or tumblr it away…it’s such a luxury. That being said, I never take comments or responses all too seriously.

Who really treats social media with the same level of severity as academic integrity? While secretly peeping over at someone’s answer sheet during a final would be considered cheating, and reading someone’s diary is disturbing…how is it that reading someone’s profile page… more specifically the friend of a friend’s boyfriend’s page, any less or a crime? It appears that to trade for a connected social world, privacy is no longer a matter at hand. Am I guilty of the late night stalking to see if this friend of a friend’s boyfriend is still dating my friend’s friend? I can’t say I’m not.

However, when it comes to my own profile, as my friends would know, I find it only fair that what I put up is out there in the open. That being said, I’d only want my friends to see my day to day activities. Every now and then, I check if I have my security settings set in stone, yet somehow information seems to leak. It appears evident, that privacy doesn’t truly exist in a world where everything’s casually done through clicks and taps.

The casualness and ease that comes with it all has also allowed laziness to grow in me. Retweeting, reblogging, or sharing others’ thoughts has become a habit of mine. In school, copyright is taught and academic integrity is followed. But in the realm of social media, it’s been a war of cool people coming up with thoughts, and other cool people restating the same thought. At times it even seems impossible to trace back to the original source. Bibliographies are so annoying when it comes to writing a 10% paper for a course, yet we all secretly admit the value in it. I can’t say that the habit of restating others thoughts while socializing digitally is necessarily a good one; I can’t say that I’ve regarded others’ possible casual content on blogs or social networks with the same respect as I do with published journals and research papers. What if there were a way to give credit to the original authors, as casual as their thoughts may be? What if they got paid for their thoughts, just as any author in real life would? Would monetization save me from my lazy habit and disrespect?

Has the lack of privacy control or content sharing gone out of hand? That is something I can’t completely judge. Some of us have done the late night stalking, the lazy reblogging; others have tried to hide our content, or refrain from writing the most sensational poetry pieces on a blog. But what sort of a turn would social media take when privacy and copyright is taken seriously?

Hopefully, MyCube.com may offer me more insight, into my bad habits, and what respectful social media can look like in the future.