Why We Should Always Ask Ourselves 'Are you sure you want to tweet/post that?'

Lately in the past four months of France's recent elections French President Francois Hollande's wife Valerie Trierweiler (Both president and first lady can be seen to the right) has quickly found herself as one of France's least popular leading figures. What led to France's first lady's downfall in popularity? Well believe it or not, it started with a simple tweet in twitter. Trierweiler's tweet consisted of downplaying Hollande's ex-companion. In later news France's first lady has repeatedly stated that she "regrets" the tweet and has even told one of France's newspapers that "It was a mistake that I regret  I must have been clumsy because this was badly interpreted". She goes on by saying: "I had not yet realized that I was no longer a simple citizen. It won't happen again". From moving to a simple citizen to France's first lady this obviously has a huge impact on your social status. It was a bit unwise to post a harsh tweet about someone you dislike knowing that you are now a public figure that people look up to and follow. Moreover, you are the president's wife, you have a huge influence on him and his presidency. Although, this wasn't the only time Trierweiler had gained negative recognition for her tweets. During the parliamentary elections, Trierweiler had sent out a tweet wishing good luck to Hollande's opponent and another harsh comment to the president's ex-companion. This had attracted a widespread coverage in France's press. Many called this incident an "embarrassment" to Hollande right after his presidential victory. So from the start of the elections Trierweiler had been decreasing her popularity with the French nation. To make matters worse there had even been statistics about how unpopular the first lady is. In a poll for a French celebrity magazine 67 percent of respondents have a "fairly negative" or "very negative" view on the first lady, moreover, 42 percent said Hollande's private life has a negative impact on the president's image. With all these scandals based upon the first lady, some of the French nation questions Hollande's presidency. Opponents of Hollande now portray him "as a hapless ditherer who lives in fear of two formidable women in his life".

It obvious that the media has a huge impact on our lives from what we can see from this entire event. As regular people who are active on social networks we often find important figures whom we admire posting careless nonsense. This sometimes can have a negative or positive effect on the way we see things. As you can see this event obviously had a negative impact on the first lady and the president, as they have both become unpopular to the nation of France through the carelessness of the first lady. Now most people of France see the first lady as a negative influence on the president and this has been made clear by the media. Moreover, it was very unwise for the first lady of France to post such careless comments especially since the French Press was able to get a hold of it. Being a public figure you'd expect someone to be a bit more responsible but I guess her personal rivalries got the better of her. This is why we should always be responsible and ask ourselves if 'we really need to tweet or post that comment', 'is it really worth it?'; maybe we should keep to ourselves and save our opinions for a more reasonable time.

Here is the actual article about the event from France 24:
http://www.france24.com/en/20121003-france-first-lady-trierweiler-regrets-tweet-mistake-snubbing-hollande-ex-partner-royal