Are You One of The Crazies?

The world is full of them. I'm sure at least a couple of people who are reading this are them.

I'm talking about The Crazies. Those people who due to spending too much time in front of a computer, on their phone, checking in, checking on and doing all the fun things that make a life/work involved in the social web fun - but in doing so have warped their sense of reality.

Every day I seem to run across more and more of them and thankfully I know when to walk away from them rather then giving them what they crave so much. More attention.

Symptoms of having a case of The Crazies may include:

• A higher sense of self-worth due to a ranking on social stats du jour type of site. Most commonly noticed when an envious statement such as "why wasn't I invited?" or "But, I'm an influencer too!" are uttered from their mouths and they are not kidding when saying it.
• An uncontrollable urge to speak/tweet/post/share before thinking.
• The warped sense that the world revolves around you and that everyone should be paying more attention to you because somehow you've earned that attention.
• A never ending river of shared posts and videos, but very little original created content of any variety.
• The lack of basic good manners. Especially visible when discussing/arguing any point online that they don't agree with. I know our parents raised us better than many act.
• In a face-to-face social setting, getting jittery if they haven't looked at a screen rather than talking to the person next to them for more than five minutes.

I haven't worked in an office for over five years. This is not the life for everyone because the longer you spend away from interacting with people you can reach out and touch the higher the chance that you've lost some of  the most basic social skills and could be turning into one of The Crazies.

The social aspect of the web is a powerful and awesome thing. We get to connect, share and help people around the globe who we may never even meet in person. But, just because we are behind a screen and at a keyboard doesn't give us the right to lose our brains and start acting like someone we are not.

Don't let The Crazies get to you.

The more you know...