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Following are 6 of the many things I do and think everyday to make sure I appreciate talking to online people, which results in what I hope are successful interactions with people online. I would like to apologize to Carolyn if I misunderstood this meme in any manner, and if I actually write things or express them in ways that were not wanted by the original meme.

Among many other points, the following 6 points also allow me to figure out how successful I am at interacting with others online honestly and without being selfish:

6 Simply Successful Secrets of interacting with others online

1. I respond to all people.

   I respond to all people who contact me, even if that means responding to things from long time ago that I might have overlooked. I personally feel that if I cannot respond to all the people who write to me, I should not be giving the impression that anyone can contact me. I do not like being asked something and then not being heard; why would I do the same to others? Also, if I have any personal issues going on in life, I try not to bring it to other people or let me affect my behavior towards people online. Even when I come back from the hospital and am not feeling well, I simply say or write “I will get back to you on this within a day, if that is ok with you.” to people who have contacted me and need a response.

   For me, forcing myself to write something simply because of being obligated to respond to things is the same as being selfish, since the other person deserves an honest answer from me. For me, telling others that I will respond in detail later or even not responding for a day or two and then responding with a good answer/reply along with the reason for the late response is an honest answer compared to writing a small thing in the email and sending it off. If you do not hear from me after more than a few days, that means I have misplaced or overlooked your email or message. My apologies; please contact me again.

2. I do not like telling people they are wrong

   I do not like saying “You are wrong.” I always show my opinion on things to show the logic I used to arrive at a disagreement, or I at least say I do not understand something in order to get more information. I prefer disagreeing over issues instead of with people. Even if there is an issue that people are really sensitive about, like same-sex marriages or euthanasia, I always give my logic and tell the other person that I can see why they arrive at their conclusion. Do I do this because I know I am a saint? No. I do such a thing because I want others to disagree with me the same way also.

3. I try to reflect on everything almost constantly

   I got this idea from Carolyn, and the more I think of it, the more I like the idea of reflecting at the end of the day instead of continuously. The reason thinking about verifying things all the time may be bad is that you feel stressed a lot whenever a doubt enters your mind. For me, the good thing is that because of reflecting constantly, I keep rethinking about everything to ensure my interactions with others have a good reason behind them constantly.

4. I realize I am not here to only to help my readers

   I am here to help myself and help my readers also. That is why when I come across a blogger who keeps mentioning that he/she help others by leaving comments on other sites, I try to observe if in reality they leave comments only to get people back to their own sites. I do that to figure out how not to act similarly. I am here to write what I think is right and benefit from your input and my expression, and I am here to express what I think is necessary for you to know. We already have deception and lies wanting money and attention from unsuspecting people in the guise of “I want your input on this” filling up the atmosphere in the offline world; why bring such a mentality to the online world also when we have such a wonderful opportunity to do good things online?

5. I interact with the same people differently from time to time

   Carolyn wrote that “There’s no reason for boredom.” At first I thought I might disagree, but after reading the examples like “A squirrel hiding nuts“, I realized that we really can kill boredom if we try hard, and I agree with Carolyn. Even if it is doing something we usually do not do, we can fight off boredom and feelings of wasting time. If my conversations with a person become boring, I try to spark something new or do things differently. If your conversation with a person becomes boring and you do not do anything, you might end up not talking to that person in the long run, and may actually not be interested in interacting anymore.

6. I try to think about my readers the same way I think about people in the offline world

   For me, saying “How was your day?” to a person online is the same as saying it to an offline person face to face. I say things when I mean them. That is why sometimes you will notice me online asking specific questions like “What are you doing right now?” or “How did this-or-that go?” instead of asking “How was your day?“, as in those situations, I may actually be more interested in other things going on with you instead of what happened earlier in the day.

   If I ask something, it means I really want to know. If I do not have time to talk about something, I will say something like “Sorry, I have to go do this-and-that, but I will be back around this-and-this time and we will talk about this then” and later, I always bring up the topic myself to continue the conversation. I do not like asking something when I am not ready to listen to the response/answer. Asking something without wanting to listen to the answer means I have to fake my responses to pretend I care. I do not do that, as I do not like it when people do that to me.

Those are 6 of the many things I do everyday in order to try to be successful at interacting honestly and sincerely with people online, and I think it works.

What about etiquettes and manners?

You may have noticed that I did not mention etiquettes and manners that much. The reason for that is that you need a basic philosophy over things in order to have an idea of what to do, and things like manners and etiquettes are useless if you do not have a plan or a philosophy. For me, there are many points that make up my philosophy on interacting successfully with people, and the above points are some of those points.

Tag yourself, and thank Carolyn.
For this meme, I would like to tag anyone who wishes to be tagged, as usual. I will link to your site and your post if you list a few things that you do daily or almost everyday that allow you to be successful at something. I request that you please remember to link back to the original “Simply Successful Secrets” post, and the post by Carolyn as she introduced me to this, even if you do not link to my site or this very post. I will still link to you.

Thank you Carolyn for tagging me.

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Here are the rules as Vera describes them:

Following are the ten unknown habits that I have probably not mentioned before [personal stuff], and after that are the 6 people I would like to request participation from for this meme.

1. I prefer not having ice in anything I drink.
2. I prefer night to day.
3. I look forward to rainy days.
4. I respect people based on what they do [mental, verbal and physical] and what they avoid doing [mental, verbal and physical], and not who they are.
5. I have at least 2 confirmed stalkers who became obsessed with me because of this website.
6. After writing something for the first time, I always like to rewrite everything again in order to have smaller and clearer sentences, even though I sometimes find it boring to read what I have written already since I already know what I wrote.
7. One of the reasons I like the internet is because it has the potential to treat everyone equally, and such a mentality can hopefully flow back to the offline world. Whether or not we actually use such a potential is up to us.
8. I love actors who make you focus on the story and not the acting. Same thing goes with special effects. The minute someone starts to think during a movie “Wow, that is good acting” or “Amazing special effects“, as is the case with most recent movies, I start to realize that the acting and special effect was not good enough to be realistic. You should only realize that something was good only when you step back and realize that it is a movie you are watching, and not a documentary.
9. I like cats and I also object, while trying to understand, their usual habit of playing with food before the kill.
10. I do not fake my smile. I do not like people faking their smile all the time also. For me, smiling simply because it is a nice thing to do is fake. Smiling when saying “Hi, how are you?” should be a real one. If you have to pretend to smile, you are faking it. Try to leave your worries behind and focus on that moment of interaction with other people as a way to forget your stress, whatever it may be, and thus put on a real smile since you are so happy to be focusing on something not stressful.

I would like to tag Ashley, Suki, Mike, Nicole, Ronalfy and Vixx. I know everyone is busy and many people do not participate in memes anymore. So even though I have to tag other people, I do not expect you to participate. Your participation in my site by reading my entries is already more than enough for me.

Thank you Vera for tagging me. Thanks for reading.

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Here are the 5 things that I may not have mentioned before on this site, or in person, and things that you may not have known or guessed before. It was hard for me to pinpoint only 5 things out of the countless things that never get mentioned on this site, so I’ll stick with the following five simply because they are related to this site and show something about me.

1. I don’t like doing favors because of obligations, and I try to do things first without asking for anything in return. Online, I do my best not to post comments on a site when it is assumed that I must post a comment. I do the same thing with links; I rarely ask for link exchanges. Instead, I like linking to sites even if those sites do not or would not link to me. Similarly, I post comments on sites even if the owner of such sites have stopped posting comments on my site.
2. Online, I have a few nicknames that many people, both mature and immature, have called me in the past. These nicknames have become so popular that many people online only know me by these nicknames.
3. All posts except a few that belong to the “update” category have a reason and a message behind them. This includes posts ranging from reviewing online services to movies to personal stories and narratives.
4. I do not like to follow the typical trend of posting about a certain topic simply because it is the season to do so. I do, however, love reading such articles on other sites as it seems that many people can write just about anything so beautifully that one feel relaxed and drenched in their writing. Why do I love something which I myself don’t do? Simple: Just because I do not do something or at the moment think that I cannot do well does not mean that I have to condemn and avoid it.
5. I try to avoid small talk. So if I ask you “How are you doing today?” online, I’m actually interested and am ready to listen to whatever comes my way, whether it’s for a minute or for a long time.

For this meme, I would like to tag Ally, Birdie, Simply-Precious, Jerine, Sawai and Valerie, if they have time, would like to participate and haven’t already done so. I’ll send a message to those who have been tagged to let them know about this. This post will also be linked to from the “About” page soon.

Thanks Daniel for the tag, and thank you for reading.

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What is a meme?

A meme is a set of actions or questions, in the form of a theme, that one addresses or focuses upon. It can be an idea like flickr, where people post pictures as part of their content. Memes get created by someone, anyone to be precise, and then get moved onto the next participant through an invitation. This invitation can either be a direct invitation in the form of an email to the person being invited, or it can be an indirect invitation in the form of mentioning the name of the person, in our own blogs, who we want to invite, or in memeic terms, tag.It can be a theme, questions, something you do online or in real life, write about, or anything else. It’s like following a guideline regarding a certain topic or atmosphere.

What is tagging for a meme?

Tagging someone for a meme means exactly what it says; you’re tagging someone else to do the same meme on their website. It’s like the tagging game you play in real life. After you’ve finished doing the meme, you tag a specific number of other people to perform the same meme; usually, that number of people you tag is exactly the same as listed in the previous meme from which you yourself were tagged.

Why participate in a meme?

The main point of an online blog meme is the content and replication; someone adds value to the meme through their participation, and in turn their own site gets more valuable and interesting content. They get more people to chip in also. Sometimes the memes results get stored in one location, like the place where the meme originated from. An example of this is Photofriday, where every week people have to participate by analyzing and coming up with interpretations about a picture by doing it on their own websites, and then posting the results on the main PhotoFriday site.

Other kinds of memes

The most common form of a meme is what I call the “Uncontrolled meme” or the “lose meme.” An uncontrolled meme, or a lose meme, don’t store the results of the participation in one place. Instead, the results can be found on the websites that participated in that specific meme. There may not be a central website to list all the websites that participated in that specific meme, so the only way to find out who participated in a meme is to actually visit the websites that participated in the meme and see who was invited to that meme, or to work our way up through the previous invitations to see who was tagged for that meme before the website we’re currently visiting participated in it.

Well, that’s it. I hope that explained things instead of complicating the concept further. Thank you for reading.

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