Dear Fellow Flickr Users
1. Please use tags responsibly. Tags are used to label subject matter and assist Flickr users in searches. When I want to type the word bunny into the search box, for instance, I expect to find thousands of pictures of cute bunnies. I do not expect to find:
a. Your dog named Bunny
b. Your girlfriend named Bunny
c. Your girlfriend named Rachel, who is wearing bunny ears
d. Your child wearing bunny ears
e. Your dog wearing bunny ears
f. Some random shit that has absolutely nothing to do with rabbits
Same for Houston. Don’t tag stuff “Houston” if it is not recognizably in Houston. That day you went to visit your cousins at your grandma’s house, which just happened to be in Houston? That day does not need to be commemorated with hundreds of Flickr pictures of your cousins at the dining table, ALL TAGGED “HOUSTON.”
Okay? Can you grasp the concept? Okay, thanks.
2. If you want your Flickr pictures to remain private, why not make them accessible to your friends and family only? You might have noticed that Flickr provides that option.
If you don’t want to make your pictures private, though, then don’t freak out when strangers view your pictures and comment on them. Don’t write gaspy blog entries about how creepy it is that strangers wanted to view pictures of your precious child wearing bunny ears, and how some of them had the nerve to comment such vulgarities as “Cute kid.”
Unless, that is, you’re one of those people who writes public blog entries and then totally freaks out when strangers read and comment on them. You know – one of those people who answers a stranger’s comment with, “Uh, hello. Welcome, I guess. May I ask how you found my blog?” (Answer: “It’s on the Internet, stupid.”) One of those people who follows up that comment with a blog entry that says, “I didn’t realize, when I started this little journal of my personal observations, just how many people in the world have nothing better to do than to seek it out. So I am going on hiatus – possibly a permanent one – and, in the meantime, if anyone knows of a job where I won’t be punished for writing about my boss’s physical shortcomings in a public forum, then please, please email me.”
If you are one of those people, then don’t worry about my Flickr advice, because you don’t understand the Internet to begin with, and a Darwinian virus will probably remove you from my path sooner or later.
