Humor and Your Southern Social Media Manners!

My friend Mark Levy (Twitter – @levyinnovation), has provided me an endless tool for laughter when I’m having a particularly lousy day, because he mentioned to me that every time he sees the Geico pothole commercial he thinks it sounds just like me and it makes him laugh.

(I’ve included the commercial YouTube at the top of this blog post.)

On bad days, I watch it to make myself laugh. While I don’t think I sound all that Southern, the voice in the Geico commercial does tend to grow on you.

It also reminds me how powerful humor is and why it’s so important to use in our lives and in our social media presence. Laughter is the great equalizer for us all.

My great Aunt Florence used to say, “If you can’t say something funny, don’t bother to say anything at all.” At her funeral this was particularly hard on all of us because what’s funny about a funeral?

In a small cemetery, in Mobile, Alabama we all stood in the rain, led by a minister, who was all of 30, and he used humor to ease our grief.

The minister related how on the last Sunday of Aunt Florence’s life she had managed (at 90 years old) to go to church that morning, have him over for fried chicken and turnip greens at noon, and prior to that mowed the front lawn on her riding mower, in her favorite purple flowered floppy hat.

In fact, she was a little bit peeved at the minister because he came a bit earlier than noon and caught her, all dressed in white on the mower clipping the very last bit of the front lawn. She was a staunch advocate of good Southern manners and you never arrive early for supper in the South.

But caught her he did and despite her chiding, they had a great supper and later that night she went to sleep and passed away. When he finished the story, our tears turned to laughter because his story had so perfectly captured our Aunt Florence and her great love for supper, mowing the lawn and her church.

I suppose today I’m feeling particularly Southern and proud because the Texas Book Festival is this weekend and my client Bill Scheft is here among all the other amazing authors that always make me laugh.

So your “Minding Your Southern Social Media Manners” is really about remembering that laughter is good medicine online and offline.

1. Don’t waste time being snarky.
2. Don’t Twitter twerrible twthings.
3. Don’t Facebook-fatigue folks.
4. Don’t blog bad mojo
5. Don’t ever lose sight that life is best lived offline and online with humor and grace.

DM me on Twitter if you’re at the Fest, would love to see you. Twitter @nettiehartsock .