Be upfront about who's writing tweets

I am not a physicist, but I am loosely familiar with some natural law of physics which holds that it is impossible for us to be in two places at the same time. Unless, of course, you're a subatomic particle, which I'm not. Or Schrodinger's cat, which I'm also not.

For the longest time now, I've assumed that other human beings who are also not subatomic particles nor physicist's imaginary cats also are unable to be in two places (or exist in two states of being) at one time. But the recent spate of televised debates among the Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls suggests otherwise.

On the evening of the most recent three-hour debate, several of the candidates tweeted out comments during the course of the evening, a feat seemingly impossible because they were standing on a stage at the exact moment one of their tweets got posted. Often, the tweets seemed pre-packaged to coincide with a good line or salient point the candidate managed to work into the debate.

While it may seem obvious to many that someone or a group of people on the candidate's campaign staff is tweeting on the candidate's behalf, it seems odd that candidates would want their followers to know when they are actually tweeting and when someone else is tweeting on their behalf. The same goes for candidates from other political parties.

It's just that because there were so many people on stage who were vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, the practice was in sharp display during the three-hour debate.

Is it wrong for a busy person to have someone else manage their social media? Of course not. But it seems a lost opportunity for any candidates or political officeholders to engage in honesty and transparency by making clear to followers whether they are actually writing and posting their own words. It would be the right thing to do.

There a few methods of practicing honest tweeting. One would be to include a sentence in a Twitter profile that essentially says, "I do not always write my own tweets."

But a better way for Democrats, Republications, Libertarians and those of any party to practice Twitter transparency is to borrow a practice similar to that used by Michelle and Barack Obama when the latter was in office.

On the morning of Jan. 12, 2012, in one of her first tweets, Michelle Obama wrote: "This account will be managed by campaign staff, with any tweets from the First Lady herself signed '-mo.'" The president used 'bo' to indicate which tweets were directly from him. It would have been simple for any of the Democratic candidates to have engaged in a similar practice so followers could distinguish why they and not a staffer wrote under their name.

After all, we all know that you can't be tweeting while you are engaged in a live debate, unless moderators have started allowing the practice. It's disingenuous to pretend that you are capable of doing so, unless you are a subatomic particle or a thought-experiment cat.

Few of the latter ever run for office. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Correcting a case of mistaken identity

Many of us have found ourselves in awkward settings in which we're approached by someone who seems to know who we are, but we can't for the life of us remember his or her name or, in some cases, whether we actually know that person.

The latter regularly occurs when approached on the street by an eager pedestrian who, it sometimes turns out, is using familiarity to try to sell something or seek donations for a cause.

In the cases of forgetting a name, it's fair game to choose whether to ask the person to remind you or to simply carry on the conversation. In the case of the soliciting pedestrian, it's up to you whether to stop and chat or politely walk by.

But a reader we're calling Robbie wants to know what the right thing to do was when he found himself in conversation with a person who had approached him at work only to discover well into the discussion that the person he was talking to mistook him for a mutual colleague who shared a glancing resemblance to Robbie.

"By the time I figured out she thought I was someone else, it felt awkward to correct her," writes Robbie. Instead, he writes that he tried as hard as her could to end the conversation as quickly as possible. "Should I have done more?"

A few possible issues arise from not correcting his colleague's case of mistaken identity.

First, it puts the other colleague in an awkward spot if she takes up the conversation with him and he hasn't a clue what she's talking about. That's not really Robbie's problem, I suppose, but it's not the most thoughtful thing to do to a colleague. Correcting her would likely take a lot less time than visiting the mutual colleague to fill him in so he would be up to speed.

Second, Robbie runs the risk of having the person discover her mistake from someone else at the company and having her wonder what kind of guy pretends to be someone he's not, even if that wasn't Robbie's intention.

Awkward stuff happens. We call our closest friends and family members by the wrong name sometimes. But feeling embarrassed by awkward situations is no reason not to set things straight as soon as we discover an error.

When he discovered that it was clear that she thought she was talking to someone else, the right thing would have been for Robbie to tell his colleague. Robbie could have taken on as much responsibility for the miscue as his colleague by letting her know it took a while for him to figure out that she clearly had someone else in mind.

It might be an awkward transition to the conversation, but it's an honest one and one that is likely to save each of them a great deal of time in the future. They can take some joy in also now knowing someone else at work who seems interesting to talk to, even if they originally had no idea who one another was. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.