SOCIAL MEDIA
ego inflating parties. He was rapidly developing a reputation and I didn’t want to be tarred with that brush as it might stop me getting a job in the future.” Smart kid. That captain could find it tricky to find a new job with an attitude like this, and it’s been widely agreed he’s setting a terrible example to the younger generation who are constantly being told to put their phones away and interact in real life.
Passive aggression online has really peaked with social media. Instead of telling your boyfriend/girlfriend/catsitter/mum’s friend you’re annoyed with their behaviour why not post elusive needy memes or attention seeking statuses about them? Because it’s really immature and pathetic, that’s why. Why this need for the barrage of ‘you ok hun?’ and ‘PM me babes’ posts? If you were genuinely worried about a friend would you not contact them privately and ask? Why does everything have to be so very public? Is everyone trying to prove themselves? What happened to having a crap day and telling your immediate circle about it, and then moving on?
seeing inappropriate photos – and before I get told not to be so uptight, if I can see it, so can my boss, his PA, the management company, any guest, the broker… should I go on? Anyway just make sure you keep it fun and clean and you’ll be fine.”
A Chief Mate added, “(social media has) been instrumental in potential crew not getting jobs on board here from the ‘marital status: single’ with wives/husbands/fiancés on their profiles to ‘non-smokers’ with photos of them puffing away on a night out, completely eliminating them from the selection process even if up until that point they were (on paper) the stand our candidate. It’s also invaluable for ‘friends in common’ feature as the 6 degrees of separation is probably more like the 1 degree rule in Yachting with that common denominator usually more than happy to either verify a reference/period of employment or completely dispel it. With the exception of green crew, I wouldn’t touch a candidate who we didn’t share at least one friend in common as there’s usually a sinister reason as to why the average crew member has a lack of activity/connectivity on social media.”
Although admittedly it’s rather amusing when a crew member posts a total rant and has forgotten they accepted a friend request from the subject of said rant’s bestie or even better, the subject themselves, and then we get to watch the online fall out…. But on a serious note, it’s a shame because when someone does put out a genuine cry for help on social media it might not be taken seriously.
Not to mention the angry keyboard cowboys and cowgirls who, behind the safety net of a screen, insult, attack, belittle and bully to their heart’s content. What they fail to acknowledge is that doing so on a public forum could be career suicide. The amount of senior crew, captains, managers and agents who log on to these pages to silently scroll and read comments is quite frightening. Which leads on to those crew looking for work, either via social media or otherwise. A chief stew told us, “First thing I do is go and find their Facebook and Instagram accounts to see what sort of people they are. Even if their facey is private I can still see all their profile and cover pics, and quite often that’s all I need to know. I’ve not hired a ton of people due to
Another Chief Mate drew attention to the mental health issues the overuse of social media brings. “The biggest draw back we’ve found is with green crew assuming other crew are having a much better time/more down time/easier season due to the illusion they’re creating online. Social media is a great-in-theory platform for interaction, however the human nature factor usually turns it into a negative experience that encourages a flattering exaggeration of people’s existence.” It’s completely true, not many of us would post pictures of us scrubbing toilets, cleaning up sick, fixing black tanks or sat doing accounts or other menial tasks – we only post the fun stuff, the achievements, the good things. And some people may exaggerate… or inflate the truth, just to get those precious likes.
At the end of the day lives portrayed on social media are vastly different to real lives. It’s important to remember to take everything you see online with a pinch of salt. The grass is not necessarily properly greener over there, let’s face it, it was probably an ugly brown patch before it had 15 filters slapped on it and has been edited to within an inch of its life.
34 | SUMMER 2018 | ONBOARD
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