What’s the smartest thing your mum has ever told you?

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

For mother’s day at school my kids were asked to fill in this questionnaire about me. It’s quite funny to look at really, and I was surprised to see that the advice that stuck was ‘DO NOT BE RUDE ON THE INTERNET!’.

Well it’s true!

And why do I bring it up? Because this week it came to my attention that in the online VO world, of which there are varying levels of professionalism (sad to say) there had been an incident where an artist was publicly abused

on twitter using pretty heavy language, by a fairly high profile company in that industry.

I read the thread.

I looked at the shocked responses from those in the community and I wondered why the person behind the horrible tweets had not be told by their mother (or boss, friend, guy at the cafe) …

‘DO NOT BE RUDE ON THE INTERNET!’.

ok, so everyone has levels of frustration in 2020, people have found themselves getting riled up over the most inane things sure, but if you have a professional profile, anywhere, take my ten year old’s advice.

Sure, be rude with your boss, friend or guy at the cafe, neighbor, cat, whoever, but take a moment to assess whether clicking post is worth it. In fact, try being kind instead, or funny, or whimsical, see whether that gets your further than insulting and alienating those in your professional community.

And yes I’d quite like to be given a mustang. (See the questionnaire!)

And yes I did re-read before I clicked post. I don’t think I’m being rude.