Last week, I had my BitchBuzz piece ready to go and then decided to sleep on it. (I always like to re-read my work before committing them to digital history.) Upon awakening I got some unexpected news that altered the direction of my post.

So I shelved what I wrote intending fully to send that along for this week’s contribution. At the time I thought my initial post and its replacement were totally different.

Turns out I was wrong.

Turns out my last post tees this one up rather nicely.

My previous offering to the BitchBuzz goddesses mused on the social imperative of staying connected to others by something more than the slender strands of ones and zeros we call social media.

But what happens when good social media people go wrong, or at least turn socially retarded for a brief moment? And what if in doing so you damage an old-fashioned, “real world” relationship? (Those things to which I fondly refer as “carbon-based world connections”.)

That’s precisely what I did recently.  And frankly I’m horrified.

To be clear, I’m pretty vocal about my opinion that, as a rule, the jean-clad folks who populate Silicon Valley are not among the most socially graceful and adept people in the world. They may be social, but sometimes, simple etiquette and proper behavior . Well, let’s be somewhat diplomatic and just say it escapes them. Perhaps I’m swinging my judgmental scythe in an overly sweeping arc on this one, but the truth of the matter is that geeks ain’t really known for their social graces.

(Which, by the way, makes the fact that we’ve given birth to a cadre of “social” technology designed to engender better, or at least incessant, communication all the more amusing.)

Long story short – a month or so ago while skipping across the digital meadow of social media I stomped squarely on a friend’s feelings.  It was one of those instances where a thought went through my mind that in the past would have swirled a moment and then gone away. In today’s existence of itchy Twitter finger, however, that thought gathered momentum, whooshed out of my head and squarely onto the keypad of my N95. 

I’ll refrain from the story itself, partly because not relevant but mostly because it involves other folks whose predilection for flaying personal things open on the Internet lies 90 degrees or so towards the conservative from mine. Suffice to say, that the ensuing discussion about the situation was equal parts awkward, uncomfortable and … enlightening.

The awkward part is obvious as is the uncomfortable, but enlightening? Really?

Yep. And here are the three little nuggets I took away:

1. Inner voices are inner voices for a reason. They shouldn’t necessarily emerge to the outside world.  Put more simply, while it’s important to find one’s voice, that doesn’t mean all that it says should be shared.

2.  Should you choose to let fly with the voices, make sure you pick the right medium. 140 characters is pretty damn short. And while the statement I made on Twitter that night was a complete thought – it wasn’t precise and as a result was even more insulting.

3. When it comes to speaking your mind to someone, that’s what you should do – speak. And while you can certainly use great technology to do so, there is no substitute for doing some things the old-fashioned way.