Your virtual persona should be an extension of the real you, which I forgot to be the other day

The other night shortly after 11 p.m. I read negative comments on our Facebook page claiming that I was attributing a photo credit to our friend, and local artist JF Kuehnen.

A particular photo was posted on this site and on our social media pages promoting a community event. I tagged a couple of organizations that were involved as well as JF since he was one of the participating artists.

The entity that took offense to me using the photo without giving them credit. However, they took the photo many years ago when they had been hired by the host organization.

In fact, the photo in question, which was removed after a bit of an online back-and-forth, had the logo of the event we were promoting. I should mention, I did not get paid to promote the event, it was just a community service.

As you would notice if you have followed Muskoka Unlimited posts, the photos that don’t belong to me are given proper credit for. I did not know this organization had taken the photo, or I would have given them credit and tagged them in the posts.

Rather, I figured that the organization we got the photo from had full rights to the photo – since they had paid for it and put their own logo on it – and thus any credits were released. This occasionally happens and after 20-plus years in the business I’ve seen it plenty of times.

Now, to get to the part I’m not proud of; when seeing the false accusations that I was giving credit to someone else, I got my back up and replied that the offended entity should have sent a DM and since they were “so desperate for attention,” I would be happy to give them credit.

I hit a nerve with them, and they went on to do five posts and demand that I take down their photo as I hadn’t paid for it.

The truth is, I didn’t have to take down the photo as it had been paid for already by the organization hosting the event I was promoting at the time. All I had to do was give the photo credit and they wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.

This organization was acting like a troll, and I responded emotionally and troll-like myself due to exhaustion after a long weekend of coaching at a soccer festival, doing parenting and household chores, attending the event in question, and just living life.

My final two replies included me stating that I was taking down the photo from all the posts and this company could now “go back to being irrelevant.”

That was unnecessary, as were all my replies at that time of night, and I let myself be drawn into a childish display of online nonsense.

The reality of the situation is, if we had spoken on the phone or in person, I would have been way more understanding of the situation – especially having had on occasion seen other people put their name on my work (particularly on press releases I wrote and distributed on behalf of the Huntsville Soccer Club).

And had this company reached out in a private message rather than publicly, I would have been very understanding and less vitriolic in my replies.

I always have taken pride in only posting OPEDs or comments online that I would be happy to debate and repeat during an in-person discussion with anyone.

Though many will point to the fact the company should not have acted like a troll and tried to call me and my friend out publicly, which is the action that spurred the reaction, I can only be my authentic self and control my own actions.

I have since taken down all comments regarding the situation as I don’t want to reward trolling. Or even have others be angry at this business for acting like a troll – I’m fairly certain they are nice people who acted emotionally rather than logically.

I also didn’t want a moment of weakness to be a lasting impression among those who may not know me yet.

I wrote this column because upon reflection of the situation, I feel like we could all be a little bit more aware of how we react virtually.

As well, I wanted to illustrate how it’s important to take a step back and give a topic healthy consideration before reacting and responding. This advice, which was given to me by several very intelligent individuals over the years, is beneficial for both online and real-life occurrences.

Being authentic is about being your true self everywhere you go. When commenting or posting online, ask yourself this question: would I say those words out loud and in person?