The must follow Twitter mantras to avoid a Pushkar-Tharoor style mess

This social network lives vicariously. A good scandal is what it feeds off and ends up filling your mundane day with jokes, rants and opinions. Yes, we’re looking at you, Twitter. Since yesterday, the buzz on the Indian Twitter scene has been about Congress MP Shashi Tharoor’s alleged love triangle unfortunately **trickling on to the site** .   Tharoor is Union Minister of State for HRD and a prolific tweeter with over 20 lakh followers and yesterday the account started throwing up seemingly random tweets, that seemed to be messages sent to the minister himself. The messages are attributed to Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist with the Daily Times. On the face of it, the story seemed to be that of a hacker making Direct Messages on the website public. However, Tharoor’s wife, Sunanda Pushkar took everyone by surprise when she said she was the one posting messages from her husband’s account. She went on to then have a very public spat with the journalist, one that is still ongoing. One thing still remains unclear; where did Pushkar find the messages? She claims they were on Tharoor’s BBM logs, but some of them seem rather like DMs from Twitter.   The tweets have since been deleted with Tharoor claiming that his account had been hacked and his team was working on it to fix it, but they had thrown the Twitterverse into a tizzy. Some tweets talk of Tarar professing her love for Tharoor. “I love you, Shashi Tharoor. And I go while in love with you, irrevocably, irreversibly, hamesha. Bleeding, but always your Mehr,” and “You unfollowed me. You don’t RT me and you don’t answer me on twitter. I can live with your favourites. I have your personal validation of my words, I don’t need any public one. For that I will wait until we are together publically really mehr.” [caption id=“attachment_216321” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Good ol’ days (Image credit: PTI)[/caption]   Clearly, a very disturbed Pushkar, who told the Financial Express that she would soon be applying for divorce, was livid enough to ignore the old adage, “Never wash your dirty linen in public.” Celebrities and personalities having a meltdown in public is not a new phenomenon, but with social networks thrown in to the equation, the whole exercise can become a whole lot more embarrassing, cringeworthy and sad. So, here are our commandments or mantras for Twitter that apply not just to the rich and famous, but anyone who doesn’t want to have a public meltdown on social networks.   Thou shalt not wash thy dirty linen in public: The most obvious commandment of them all, this is bound to drop off you common sense radar sooner or later. As we have seen, it doesn’t require a great amount of effort to make shocking, scandalous information public where everyone can see. So tread especially carefully when it’s about your marriage or an affair. Things can especially get bad on websites like Facebook, where even acquaintances can see your very public admissions.   Even if you do leak sensitive info online, something on the scale of office or college gossip can be contained easily or won’t have the same kind of impact. On a national scale, however, a scandal is something that will remain in public memory for a long time, especially thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the likes. Just think about Tharoor’s own tweet about travelling “cattle class” with the “holy cows” during Congress’ austerity drive, which has seen a new lease of life thanks to his latest Twitter gaffe. So you know how risky shooting your mouth off can be on Twitter.   It’s not just Tharoor of course. We have seen sportspersons lose it on Twitter too, whether it’s Aussie cricketer **David Warner blasting journalists** or English footballer Carlton Cole making racial slurs. Going crazy on Twitter will only make you go more crazy, from all the aftermath, **as celebrities have often found out** .   Thou shalt not share thy passwords: This is a slightly tricky one. For a lot of couples, sharing passwords, especially of emails and social networking websites, is seen to be a sign of trust in the post-Facebook era. But this can be a bad idea on some occasions, as Tharoor found out. Remember the time you mildly flirted with a friend on chat, even before you met your wife? Or the time where your friends and you had a wild time at a bachelor’s party? They may be gone from your head, but a social network never forgets. Unless, of course, you’re the annoying kind that makes a joint profile with your spouse; feel free to share passwords then. Also, while you’re at it, it might be a good idea to keep your devices always locked.   Thou shalt not exchange controversial Direct/ Private Messages on social networks: While we’re still unsure whether the tweets Pushkar posted from Tharoor’s account were indeed from his DMs or his BBM as Pushkar states, it is imperative that you do not exchange racy Direct Messages or Private Messages through your social network profiles. But if you HAVE to talk through DMs, at least ensure they are deleted in time. Given how easy it is to phish Twitter accounts today, would you rather risk it?   While no service is free from the risks of hacking, gaining access to one’s Twitter or Facebook account is as easy as sending across a malicious link. In Twitter yore, it’s often said that the really good tweets are actually hidden in a person’s Direct Message inbox. And these are the tweets that one might not want made public.   These Twitiquettes are unwritten rules for being on social networks. And when in doubt about whether that tweet in your head is kosher or not, always think about how you would react to the same tweet if it were posted by someone else. That never fails