Subtweeting may seem secretive, but there’s a good chance it’s not. Source: Shutterstock.com

Passive-aggressiveness and social media just seem made to go hand in hand. You have a whole audience of people waiting to hear what you have to say, but you can also kind of hide behind the anonymous nature of the Internet. As you would expect, this isn’t really a positive relationship.

HuffPost Teen recently republished a piece from high school publication The Mash all about “subtweeting” – basically a term has been deemed for those passive-aggressive messages that make their way onto Twitter.

Sure, no recipient is singled out, but it’s clear that message is intended about a certain someone. While it’s called subtweeting, I think it’s safe to say that this phenomenon exists on all social media in some form. I definitely see it happen on Facebook.

I’d never heard of the term before, but it captures the whole disconnect between trying to be sneaky, with still sending your thoughts out all over the Internet. The piece looks at subtweeting from a couple different and important angles, including the motivations and consequences behind it. It’s worth a read, and it reminded me why subtweeting is bad news.

Now, if you’ve done this, don’t feel like I am calling you out from up on my pedestal. Oh no, I have totally done it, which is why I know firsthand it’s a terrible idea.

Back in high school (these were pre-Twitter days), I never really thought much about posting on my friend’s Facebook walls covertly talking about other people. I mean, they’d never figure it out, so whatever. This came to a big halt after sending one of these messages and realized how totally wrong I had been.

I was in a fight with one of my friends. Well, at least I thought we were in a fight. I’m not sure if she knew. I decided to turn to my away message on instant messenger. Being quite the wordy girl I was, I thought I was so crafty in creating this message that clearly conveyed my anger with her, without ever saying her name. Well, she read it, knew it was about her and totally called me out on it.

I was humiliated. Not only because I got caught, but because I realized just how stupid it was to begin with. We were then forced to have a conversation about the original issue all in this terribly-timed moment. Sending that sub-message did some permanent damage. It wasn’t worth it, especially knowing later that if I had actually talked with her in person from the start, it may have been awkward but we probably would have stayed friends.

When Facebook timeline came out, I went back and looked at all those subtweet-type messages I used to post and got rid of all of them. They are super obvious who my friends or I were talking about, even if at the time we thought it was harmless, anonymous posting. I shouldn’t even be surprised though. Seriously, how many times have you read a cryptic tweet or status that may not say who it’s about, but you know… Even when I know it’s not about me, I get uncomfortable because I feel involved in people’s personal business that I never really wanted to jump into anyway.

One of The Mash’s sources talked about how subtweeting habits could mean you don’t develop personal communication skills. It’s true – you don’t want to be known as that totally passive-aggressive person who can’t talk one on one. Subtweeting is one of those things that like me, you’ll probably look back on and regret, so learn from my mistake and try to cut this terrible Twitter habit out ASAP.

Have you ever sent a subtweet or done something similar on social media? Did anything happen? Tell me in the comments!

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