Needle, Meet Haystack

Social networking has changed modern society forever, for both good and bad.  While in the early days of the web, users hid behind the anonymity of a screen name in chat rooms, we now expose ourselves for all to see in our profiles, tweets and blogs.  As we move more and more into the interconnected world of the Interwebs, the rules of polite social contact have changed in the professional and personal worlds.  Here are some of the rules that will govern this brave new world:

• You are allowed to add someone to your network if you have had any form of communication with them, be it as a commenter on a blog, clan member in an MMO, message board buddy, or even in person.  You can add someone if you don’t know them, but you must initiate contact before doing so, introducing yourself and explain why you want to connect with them.  ”Lol ur hott” is not acceptable if you are over the age of 15.
• You cannot send a person more than two messages if they have not responded to you.  This includes messages of any type, from texts to emails to private messages and IMs.  After that, you will have to wait for a response, and if none is given, you cannot get angry with them.  This rule does not apply to emergency phone calls.
• If you have not had any sort of contact with another person for more than six weeks, you must initiate contact through either a generic greeting or a salutation pertaining to a recent event (birthday, holiday, etc.).
• You are under no obligation to attend events, join pages or add groups recommended to you by someone with whom you have not been in the physical presence of for over six months.
• If  invited to an event with an RSVP through the evite and are not excluded from attending based on the previous rule, respond in the affirmative or negative within three days of finding the message.  If you are unsure of whether you can attend, tell the person who invited you why.  This is the only way not answering or selecting “maybe” is permissible.
• If you are online friends with someone but have never met them in person, you must have had conversations over the course of sixty days adding up to a total of four non-consecutive hours.  Texting/IM conversations count for two-thirds of their overall time (due to time spent typing), while phone/voice chat/video chat conversations count for their full duration.  This rule does not apply for business-only relationships (ie: meetings, interviews, sales calls).
• You can start arguments with friends and family online, but as the content is put up on a public forum, others may use the materials in emails or on websites without legal repercussions.
• Similarly, any content you have chosen to put online may be used by your employer (or potential employer) as grounds for termination (or not hiring you).
• If you choose to add more people simply to increase your number of friends, contacts, followers, buddies or whatever the term used is, you are not allowed to send angry messages if they decide to unfriend you or not accept your friend request.
• If you make several lists/groups of people to sort out the statuses/tweets of those you want to read and those you don’t, it is not polite to tell people which group they are in.
• Just because you unfriend someone online doesn’t mean that you are no longer allowed to associate with them.  If they become upset with you over this, determine what steps you need to take to rebuild the burned bridge.
• You are limited to posting seven non-sequitur links to videos, pictures, articles and so on per week.  Any more than that and it just gets annoying.  ”Posting” in this case also refers to emailing or telling people to come to your workspace to see something.
• If any relatives closer to you than a third cousin join a social network and request to add you, you must accept their request (assuming that you have a good relationship with them).  Especially if it’s your parents.
• If someone has not accepted your friend/event/application/group request twice, you can no longer send them a request for that particular thing.
• Unless they bring it up, you cannot bring up any pictures, comments or posts that someone has made online when you are having an in-person discussion.  The rule is not applicable in cases of personal loss, the end of a relationship, or career news (positive or negative).
• If you have “Facebook stalked” someone and then meet them in person, you must pretend that you have never seen or heard of them before.
• People may mock you (online or in person) for any status updates or tweets that have to do with any non-exemplary activity that you make a note of (ie: waking up, going to the bathroom, eating lunch, going to sleep), unless there is something special about that activity (ie: waking up with $100 in your pocket, going to the bathroom in a celebrity’s house, eating lunch at a snazzy restaurant, going to sleep in a jail cell).

Some of these rules have been touched on in previous posts, seen here and here.  Are there some rules that should be in the new social contract that you don’t see on the list?  Mention ‘em in the comments!