The internet has a message for you, college students, and it is this: today's hottest social media channels are weapons, and they can and will be used against you (#you). And when they are, writers of well-read blogs will chronicle it and preserve it for posterity. This includes Flyby.
This is a public service announcement, then, and it is in brief. If you are going to use the internet, use it wisely. There are many rules, and these are four:
1) Practice safe Snapchat.
Sure, a sloppy profile picture can make you lose your job. But Snapchat can make you lose your stuff (booze). With a lede we hope has been forever put to rest, The Cavalier Daily reports that a freshman at the University of Virginia (UVA) panicked on Monday when she received a Snapchat from a friend who was apparently at the University Police Station. When she asked her friend for deets, the friend responded that the University's Alcoholic Beverage Control was conducting dorm sweeps and had found beer in her room. She texted a few gal friends, they texted a few guy friends, and through "the power of social media," suddenly all the little freshmen were tossing their Bacardi in the bin and some enterprising fraternity brothers were doing a sweep of their own.
In response to the situation—and in a classic "that freshman" moment—Meredith Markwood, the Snapchatee, told The Cavalier Daily: "I thought, 'I can't have gotten this to the whole first-year class. I am one person. I don't even have 700 Facebook friends.'"
Takeaway: Don't Snapchat gullible friends, even if they only have 700 friends on Facebook.
2) Only buy used textbooks, because the new ones see you skimming.
Professors at Texas A&M are testing a series of digital textbooks that allow them to know when and how much students read, highlight, and take notes, according to The New York Times. "It's Big Brother, sort of, but with a good intent," an administrator told The Times.