10 years ago, a 140 character or less sentence or “tweet” would never be able to do as much damage as it does today. With the inception of Twitter in 2006 and its continuing popularity since, this form of social media outlet has more of an effect on current relationships than we may realize.

According to The Guardian, subtweeting is how people talk about others behind their back via the internet. A subtweet is a tweet directed towards a particular person without including their twitter handle. Despite not being tagged, often times the person being talked about in the subliminal tweet is seemingly obvious. For example, if your best friend accidentally cracked your phone screen and you wanted to express your angst via the internet, you might tweet “when people take your phone without asking and then break it…there’s no boundaries nowadays.”

Nowadays people use subtweets as an outlet for their frustration or simple annoyance with the person, however, they don’t bother to solve the problem at hand. It’s the same as going behind someone’s back and talking about them. Subtweeting creates drama like gossip does and arguably on a bigger scale due to the large audience known as the World Wide Web. If you’re the type of person who wants everyone to be knowing your business, then by all means go ahead. Personally, I would rather keep my business to myself.

So be careful with what you put on your social media accounts. If you don’t care about the opinions of your future employers, at least take your friends into consideration as they are the ones reading your complaints on Twitter daily. If you happen to be talking bad about them regardless if you’ve left out their name, chances are they’re going to know who you’re referring to.