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This Yom Kippur, It’s Time to Repent for Your Social Media Sins

Seriously, stop doing this stuff

by
Yair Rosenberg
September 28, 2017
Shutterstock
Shutterstock
Shutterstock
Shutterstock

Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish day of atonement, begins this Friday night. Many will spend the weekend in synagogue struggling through the traditional liturgy and its delineation of our many misdeeds. But because those penitential prayers were written before the advent of the digital age, they don’t always address some of our most egregious errors—specifically, the ones we make online.

As we learn more about how our social media pathologies were exploited by Russian trolls and fake news purveyors to influence our votes last November, there has never been a better time to resolve to change our ways. And so, in the spirit of BuzzFeed and the lexicon of al heyt, we offer here as a public service… the top 10 worst social media sins:

1. For the sin we have committed by commenting without reading the article.

2. For the sin we have committed by interjecting in a conversation on social media without checking whether someone already addressed our point.

3. For the sin we have committed by having a Finstagram.

4. For the sin we have committed by knowing what a Finstagram is.

5. For the sin we have committed by thinking we are actually going to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Twitter this time, no really.

6. For the sin we have committed by tagging people in photos where we look good and they don’t.

7. For the sin we have committed by retweeting fake celebrity death news without bothering to confirm it.

8. For the sin we have committed by replying-all.

9. For the sin we have committed by venting our outrage about an article or event without checking the date at the link and realizing it’s from 2006.

10. For the sin we have committed by shoehorning in lackluster filler material just to get our listicle to a round number.

Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Subscribe to his newsletter, listen to his music, and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.