Michigan Telephone, VoIP and Broadband blog

There are many reasons I don’t blog much anymore, but one of the reasons was that when I did post something it was rare to get any comments, and the ones that I did get were sometimes more negative than I cared for.  But also, very often I found myself writing a paragraph or two just to say, in effect, “I found this article on another site, you should check it out.”

In the last few months I have been posting most of my links to other articles on Twitter (under the user name MichiganTelepho – damn their 15 character limit) and this tends to work out well because it discourages me from being too verbose, and yet I am far more likely to post a link when I don’t have to write a long article about it.

That’s worked pretty well until tonight, when I posted a link to this article:

The high cost of high-tech teens

…..which is basically an article about how parents are getting cell phones for their kids, totally unaware of the pitfalls of extra charges for texting and other “extras”, some of which are buried in the fine print of the contract. I thought it was a good article because it educates parents about the problem and encourages them to act responsibly (by, for example, not getting a cell phone for a child until they have reached an age where they can use it responsibly).

Now, keep in mind, it was just a link to an article I thought was interesting and useful.  I didn’t write it.  I was, therefore,  not prepared for the responses I started to get.  For example, one of the early commenters said:

is this really a consumeraffairs type issue? It seems to me that the parents have no one to blame but themselves..

Uh, what?  Where did that come from? Then another person chimed in…

Hard for me to feel sorry for parents who give their kids mobile phones and not understand the consequences. Prepaid FTW!

I could not understand where these comments were coming from.  The article was intended to educate parents so they would not be irresponsible.  On the other hand, I do feel that the carriers share some of the blame by failing to conspicuously disclose the things that might cause extra charges, and  by (in some cases) failing to give parents an easy way to block access to those extra-cost services.  I also noted that as adults become smarter about corporate ripoffs, corporations are increasingly going after teenagers and pre-teens, knowing that they are not as wise to the ways of the world and can be more easily influenced to spend, spend, spend (particularly if the parents are picking up the bill – which they shouldn’t, which was one of the points made in the article).

In any case, things got a bit heated after that. Why was I getting all these negative comments about an article I thought was helpful?  And where was this “blame the victim” mentality coming from? My take is that many parents only use their cell phones (if they own one at all) for making phone calls, and that’s it.  They are, in many cases, totally clueless about text messages, charges for web access and so on.  If you are reading this blog you are almost certainly not among those people, but they are out there – maybe they are your parents or grandparents. So when their child asks for a phone, they think they are buying a phone that can be used for, you know, making phone calls, as in voice calls.  And very often the phone companies sell usage plans but do not explain about possible extra charges that may be incurred, so the parent is totally blindsided when they get their first bill.  I don’t think this is right at all, and yes, I do think that people have a right to complain about such things on consumer sites, if only so that others might read their experience and not fall victim to the scam.

Maybe I just don’t understand the ways of Twitter, but it seems to me that if someone posts an article they thought was helpful, and you disagree, you should post your disagreement as a comment on the original article – not go off on a tangent in Twitter, which just seems like an attack on the person who posted the link to article (especially if you send it as a direct message to that person).  Then again, at my age maybe I just don’t understand how these social network things are supposed to work.  Maybe I’m looking for something more akin to “60 Minutes” and the younger crowd is expecting “Jerry Springer.”  Anyway, at one point I got really pissed off at the tone of the comments, to the point that I un-friended two people (after taking a few deep breaths I re-friended one of them). Is Twitter really supposed to bring about that type of discussion?

For the record, when I post a link to an article I did not personally write in Twitter, that simply means I thought it worthy of consideration, NOT that I want to defend it against people who have nothing better to do than find something negative to post!  And, also for the record, I am NOT advocating irresponsible parenting, and parents should not yield to pressure to buy kids everything they want – but on the other hand I am sick of the “blame the victim” mentality when corporations set out to deceive and cheat customers. There is a mentality among some younger folks that I just don’t understand, that basically says it’s okay to cheat people if you are clever enough about it, or can trick them into signing a contract that allows you to cheat them.  I have no idea when this mentality became so pervasive – sure, the P.T. Barnum types have always been with us, but in the past they were more often seen as scoundrels. Today’s young people seem to have a much higher tolerance for being taken, but when someone complains about it their first response seems to be “It was your fault!  You should have known!” – at least until they are the victim.

Anyway, I hope Twitter doesn’t degenerate into a Fidonet-type experience (for those too young to have experienced it, Fidonet was a network of dial-up BBS systems that carried “echomail” conferences, in which discussions often became so contentious that some people took to calling it “Fight-O-Net”).  If you disagree with an article that someone posted, first please be sure you have read the entire article (I suspect that the people who commented on the link I posted hadn’t got past the first page) and then place your comments in the comment section for that article, if a comment section exists.  Don’t direct message the person who posted the link and start attacking them – they didn’t write the article and may not even care to defend it.  If you must comment on Twitter, just send out a general message that says something like “I just read the article at (short link address) and disagree because…” – that way the person who posted the link doesn’t feel obliged to return a comment. Keep it friendly, and you won’t be causing people’s blood pressure to shoot through the roof!