If you're living, you've heard people say "be careful what you post online" thousands of times by now. Generally speaking, this applies to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and refers to displaying mean, offensive, hurtful or inappropriate photos, videos or posts. I think by now we're all trained not to post a video of ourselves shotgunning a beer or photos of our naked bodies on our Facebook accounts, but now there's a new, seemingly safe place to do just that.
Enter "finstas." For those of you living under a rock, a finsta is a "fake instagram," that someone either creates for themselves, a group of people, or their friends. With a catchy (inappropriate?) username and an offbeat bio, a finsta is born. Smart people set their finstas to private, so only the people they allow to follow them can see what they post. That way, when you post embarrassing pictures and videos of yourself and your friends matched with aggressive or weird captions, only you and your friends can see them. Sounds great, right?
Wrong. Finstas are really fun, I agree, but be careful. Don't fall into the trap that I and many others have.
Don't get me wrong- I still maintain my finsta and in my personal opinion, mine's extremely funny. However, this past week, I made the mistake of posting about someone other than myself. Now that's where finsta fiascos are born. It's cool to post about your friends- the one's who follow your finsta and will laugh along with you. It isn't cool to post about people who don't follow your finsta. That's the trap- you have a finsta for a while and nothing bad happens, it's like your own private journal, so you think, okay, this is a safe place. You forget it's online, so you forget that life-long lesson of being careful about what you post.
In my mind, the picture and caption I put on my finsta was funny. It made me sound crazy, but it was just my friends viewing it, so I didn't care. I just thought of it as making fun of myself. Then, somehow (and no, I still haven't figured out how), the person I posted about got a hold of the post. He was not happy and though I hate to admit when I'm wrong, that's a totally valid reaction to what he saw. Though what I said wasn't necessarily mean and it certainly wasn't written to intentionally harm anyone, it still sucks to hear someone's posting online about you without your knowledge. I deleted the post and attempted to issue an apology (which was angrily refused), but I still feel bad about it.
When I talked to other people about my mistake, I ended up hearing tons of stories of others' experiencing the same situations. I felt like such a stupid a**hole until I realized that it was a common mistake. Finstas can be dangerous, so keep in mind what you've always heard: be careful what you post.
Don't fall into the trap that I and many others have. Finstas are fun, but don't forget that they're still online and people have their ways to find what they want to find. There's always the possibility of rats (unloyal finsta followers that spread around your embarrassing posts) or hackers (you know, if people are really set on looking at your finsta) or what have you. So go kill the finsta game, but please, be smart about it.
