The Antithesis of the Megaphone of Media: Social Media

I suspect that social media is popular because it gives everyone a form of expression, regardless of what platform(s) you decide to use. If you're a shutterbug, you've got Instie to play on, if you have half baked quips, you can tweet your heart out, and if you like collecting people, there's Facebook. But what's even better is that every now and then, people take a few moments from self-promotion to respond to other's people inane thoughts. The inspiration of this statement was my dining experience this week. As some of you may remember, I've been fine-dining in jeans and a t-shirt before, so it shouldn't be that shocking that I'd decide to go out to dinner immediately after working out. But then there's a wait, and my two roommates leave me by myself to go pick up one of their credit cards. So now I'm looking slumpy AND alone.

So I take out my phone to look busy, and decide to tweet, "Alone and sweaty @CapitalAleHouse. #LifeIsGood #rva."

Then I put my phone away and people watch a bit. My roommates make it back, and we eventually get a table. We dine on $2 burgers and ginger ale (okay, so the ginger ale was only me). And then we go home.

I hop back on Twitter, like I do most nights before bed. AND THEN I NOTICED THAT CAP ALE RETWEETED AND FAVORITED MY TWEET! Lawd, I was cracking up. I tag people constantly in tweets, and everyone ignores me. Except for the one time I tweet something minimally embarrassing and rather silly. Being listened to is fun.

And I would go as far to say I'm not the only one that thinks so. Part of my job is monitoring our social media accounts, so I run searches multiple times a day with various spellings of our names. And I respond to people that are talking to us or about us. And it usually catches people off guard, and I love it. Most of the time, people appreciate it, but every now and then people are just complaining and not actually looking to engage in conversation with me.

But let's focus on the good: people genuinely seem excited when I reply, favorite or retweet them. They thank me for listening, they throw us a follow, or shout us out. And I like it because it's content I don't have to produce. So let's do that more often: listen. There's a lot of good stuff happening on social media, if only we all actually listened to each other.

What's Your Worst Quality?

So I haven't gotten this interview question since applying to be a camp counselor in high school, but have long since been practicing an answer to this question anyway. How do you answer "What's your worst quality?" in a way that doesn't totally suck? My answer from high school was a total basic bitch answer of "I am a people person and try to make everyone around me happy, even if that means I'm not happy." Not only does that not really apply to my personality, but it's also like the number one bad answer to that question.

Should I ever be put on the spot for this question, I'm wondering if my inability to get my "who" vs. "that" problem under control is applicable? Is being able to readily name one of my biggest grammatical flaws a strong enough answer to this question? Because in my mind, this just means I am in tune with myself, but also shows that I have great grammar skills to know that it's an issue.

I could even elaborate about how I would CTRL + F my work everyday to double check for any "that" "who" issues. I had a post-it note on my computer to remind myself to do it. And now I can almost always get it right on the first try after being called out on it so often, and learning to mercilessly scour my work for it. So there is even a success story at the end of this proposed answer.

I'm starting to this is the only really good answer possible to the "What's your worst quality?" question because it points out a clear flaw (but not a land mine of an answer), but also highlights what I do to combat my problem, which seems to me like a recipe for a good answer.

Recognition of a minor flaw + how you will/have fixed it = success.