E22 Our Anti Social Media Summary

Ashlie: Welcome back to another episode of tactical living by Leo warriors. I’m your host Ashlie Walton and I’m here with my co-host Clint Walton. 

Clint: How are you doing. 

Ashlie: For today’s episode we want to talk about social media. For us we didn’t even have a social media account until October of last year. Baby how come we never had social media up until then? 

Clint: You know I’ve never cared for social media. I had Myspace back in what would that be? the late 90’s early 2000’s and when I was in high school. 

Ashlie: For anybody under the age of 20, Myspace used to be what Facebook is. But on a much smaller caliber.

Clint: And I always believed what’s funny with that is I always believed that Myspace would overrule Facebook in any way. And I was like I will never sign up for Facebook because Myspace is the best. 

Ashlie: You know I was just talking about this with somebody and I don’t know if you remember when we were in junior high in high school but we would have those three ring binders and we would put pictures of like all of our friends are like the coolest things for magazines in there. 

Clint: The good old glamour shot go into the mall and take pictures with a feather boa wrapped around your neck. 

Ashlie: Do you get a feather boa? The funny thing about that it goes deeper where if you weren’t best friends with somebody anymore you would take their picture out of your binder and you would go to the mall and take pictures with a new best friend and then put it inside your binder. but then to go a step further you would get like 50 or a hundred of these printed out and then you would give them to all your friends. so all your friends would also put them inside of their binders telling everybody. 

Clint: That’s just like baseball card trading.

Ashlie: And it’s so funny because it’s like Myspace had turned that into a tangible form of it like that three-ring binder.

Clint: Myspace was the end of sharing those pictures and sharing just notes back and forth between each other in class and stuff like that. And it’s funny because I doubt that even happens anymore where you write a letter to somebody and you pass it to him in class. 

Ashlie: So we kind of went off on a tangent there. But going back why is it that you and I throughout the duration of our marriage. Neither one of us had ever put ourselves out there and even established any form of social media? 

Clint: Well you know being in law enforcement I’ve always had the perception of negativity only comes from social media. I always see the negative aspects around it, but I never tried to look for the positive either. And then I also see other officers or other people getting in trouble for things that they posted. but sitting back and looking at and now while they really shouldn’t have posted it in the first place. it’s a bad perception of whatever agency they work for or just as a professionalism aspect. we are held in a high regard being in law enforcement and you don’t want to post standing in a pair of tactical pants with your shirt off holding your AR-15 out in the desert shooting.

Ashlie: And I know for me a lot of it was the safety element of it.

We’ve even paid a third-party company to constantly go on and remove our name from any sources that are public where our names or pictures of us should not be placed without intent. And as the wife of a police officer it’s always important for me to make sure that we’re not exposing ourselves in any way that would open us up to any more vulnerability than what’s already there just based on your profession and the truth is a big part of that was there was this transition during our dating period where I had an ex fiancé. And I wanted nothing to do with that ex fiancé nor did I want him to have any part of me. I didn’t even want him to see a picture of you and I together. I wanted to stay as far away from that as possible. so that was also a big factor for it. We lead and still do lead very private lives and in our transition into social media, 99.99% of that was business induced. We had no choice.

Clint: And nowadays you can’t do any type of business-related transactions without social media in some way. Social media has taken over the whole world of marketing and reaching out to clients and just developing a business from scratch.

Ashlie: And as you sit there if you can think of a single operational business, I don’t care what it is. If you have a single one in mind that has the ability to function without any form of social media reach out to us, let us know. DM us Leo warriors on Instagram, Leo warriors Number one on Facebook. I would love to know if there is in fact a possibility of a company actually functioning without that outreach. 

Clint: And I have to throw this caveat out there too is everyone who already does follow us and continues to follow us, you know we appreciate all the support that you’ve given us, and we love seeing the stories that you share with us. it’s amazing to see what inspiring people there are out there that share their story through social media. 

Ashlie: For sure. And the opposite side of that is there’s so much negativity out there that we knew getting into we would see every single day on. the biggest kicker is that most of that negativity in any sort of direct targeting comes from people who choose to post shit asking for it in return. The easiest way to function on social media and the easiest way to still have an online profile with your business and even personally and still have that level of security and that level of protection is to not post the shit that you don’t want people to see.

Clint: And that’s where people don’t completely understand. They think, “oh well if I posted no one else will see it except for who I want to see it.” Well then you gave say 100 people access to that post. Now they can share that access to 100 different people and then it can go from there. The perfect instance of this here is a photo of me that we posted of me holding a little Labrador retriever and it was a cool picture and there’s a funny story with that. but that will go into other podcasts where we talk about that whole aspect of policing. but another website took that picture and made a meme out of it and it was absolutely hilarious. I was getting texts that whole night. You’re famous on Instagram now or you’re famous on Facebook because these guys re-posted and made a meme out of you and I just put my head in my hands and shook my head. but I laughed, it was funny. 

Ashlie: And the thing with that is we’re always very cautious when it comes to the business aspect of things. when it comes to not trying to recreate something that was taken from somebody else. And I mean if you go down to the nitty gritty like what the law says when it comes to taking something like that, we could have sent them a cease and desist for that. Because it belongs to us right. We didn’t take some like stock photo. That was a photo from you of you and being with anything that we put out there on social media, it comes with this unwritten understanding that anybody can have it. anybody has access to it. Are we really going to go through something like that? of course not. number one, it was funny as hell. Like if they had asked for it, we would have given it to them. And number two it actually gives you free exposure when somebody does something like that.

Clint: Exactly. And that free exposure is something that anybody who has a business or is in any type of marketing or market for a business would love that free exposure.

Ashlie: What I want to talk about next is it’s really sensitive to bring this up. so I’m going to try to frame it in a way that doesn’t bring on any sort of unintentional influence. But there are so many social media accounts that always post or re-post or share when there’s a fallen officer. There has to be a space for that. It happens more and more often every day that we continue down this path. And with that we see it everywhere. We’re a part of an endless number of groups online. Same with everybody that we’re connected with through all of the other social media outlets and it’s very, it’s very unfortunate. Anytime something like that happens. And as a spouse of a police officer in the back of my mind there’s always this space where like what if something like that ever happened. you have to come to the realization in the understanding that there is this universal reality of it. It’s not just them. like it could have existed with me too. 

Clint: And I put myself in the shoes of one of those officers thinking of how I would feel with just seeing post after post after post of people sharing this, oh so prayers for this officer’s family. And I think that’s great that they’re expressing that. but in such a public matter already and especially how we’re such private people in that I wouldn’t want to be broadcast all over the Internet saying, “oh guess what he just got killed in the line of duty.”

Ashlie: No but I think it’s important. And this is just coming from the wife if something ever happened to you, I would want people to know this is what really happened. Like Fuck the media, they’re not telling you the right story because they never do in these instances and I would want that to be shared in the appropriate platforms. But in saying appropriate platforms, if your platform is about spreading positivity and sharing different tools and tactics like ours for example, I don’t want to share any kind of and that is a negative in my eye. because it brings down the emotion. It gets me thinking like what if that was me, what if that was my husband. There has to be some kind of boundary, some kind of container surrounding what your business is. And in saying that what you’re choosing to post and to share and I feel like if your message is let’s say you’re a makeup guru and your message is you know doing swatches on makeup and makeup videos all day and then something happens that touches you and then you go and you share that on your beauty channel and let’s say it was the death of a dog, like that touches us all. It’s not going to make sense to post that on your beauty channel. it’s just not the right container for that. But then if you hear that something happened and you go into another container where you know that there are memorials for Golden Retrievers let’s say and you’re following that page, then you know that that’s a source that you could go to if something like that happens and when you’re able to really classify and secure and bracket what these types of businesses are and what it is that they share, for us we’re also following pages that we know whether it’s something of a positive influence or something that’s going to be you know another officer down and intentionally yes we will go in and we will see what’s happening in the reality of these fallen officers and also on a normal news feed for us, we try to limit or omit completely any type of negativity. because we want to see things that are spreading awareness. So let’s say it was suicide prevention or limiting police brutality in the eyes of community policing or you know something more productive and proactive in terms of that. not necessarily like this person died and this person died. because it really hits home like constantly when you’re going through that feed and you’re seeing that all day long.

Clint: In my perception with that is people don’t do it necessarily just for to share the word or to share that that officer was killed. they do it to gain traction almost as a maybe this will get me more likes and I’m not saying all the cases or people who do that are that way. but they are undoubtedly are those people.

Ashlie: I never actually thought of that before and like that’s pretty fucked up. 

Clint: Absolutely. And that’s why like for me personally if that were to ever happen, I would be outraged. I mean I would be dead, but I wouldn’t have to worry about that. but still it’s something that people will take absolutely anything they can from you and spin it to well how can this benefit me. instead of just trying to straight out help one another in those instances and use the platforms that are in place already to kind of seek that help.

Like I wouldn’t go to a PTSD platform to look for how to comb my hair. 

Ashlie: Exactly and getting back to us having not had a social media account versus us having it now for what nine or 10 months. The thing that I found that makes it work for us being so anti is social media in the beginning is having those filters and what it is that we know we want and don’t want on our news feed to begin with and then implementing and re-implementing that and let’s say you join a group and you start to notice that there are things on there that you don’t want to see on your feed, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to be a part of that group but there’s other value there. It just means that Facebook has an incredible ability to allow you to edit your settings to see what it is that you can and cannot see on the norm when you first open up that page and be it law enforcement related or not this I believe can be put forward in everybody’s news feed. If you’re flipping on that social media account have those filters in place. understand that any kind of negativity that you’re seeing and maybe you have that one friend you just constantly posts that stuff, you can put it to where it’s not set up any algorithm to pop up as a first thing that you see every time you open up your Facebook let’s say and when you’re able to set those boundaries with regards to you and where you sit and what you want to allow into your life and then be shared within your news feed and on your page and then if you have a business on your business page, it allows you to utilize social media in a more positive way. And I know for us by doing that we had an incredibly large agency reach out to us in particular specifically based on the reason that we were posting positive influence all the time. Instead of having any kind of negativity. because it’s so easy to go to different pages and see the bad things that happen. it’s attractive. it’s attractive whether it’s somebody trying to sell something or like you said it’s attractive towards getting more likes or more views on a post. But for us I don’t ever want it to be that way. And as you sit there when you’re able to decide what it is that you want in terms of manipulating the social media account to be something that’s going to benefit your mood and your overall presence and aura as you’re starting your day, going about your day so maybe check it before you go to bed then you’re really able to set the guidelines for how you want to feel throughout your day and how you want your train of thought to go thereafter. And by having that ability and knowing that it’s yours to decide, then you’re really able to enjoy your tactical living.

 

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