As many of you might have noticed, there’s a fast-growing trend taking place where people who have been impacted by a layoff are turning almost immediately to social media to share the news about their job loss—and spread word about their sudden employment availability.

Sometimes this communication takes the form of a quick tweet, Facebook blurb, or LinkedIn posting containing a few sentences about a RIF event—and the individual’s reaction to it—and in other cases, the messaging might be a little more extreme.

Along these latter lines, one of the most famous examples of such behavior happened just recently, where a young woman actually filmed her termination taking place from a technology company, Cloudflare, and posted it on TikTok.  In this 9-minute video, which has since gone viral, she confronts an HR professional and another apparent leader at the company—neither of whom she’d ever met—asking them to walk through the specific reasons why her job was being eliminated despite the fact that (at least according to her side of the story) she exceeded all of the expectations asked of her by her manager.

If you haven’t seen this video, I’d encourage you to watch it via the link above.  It’s mesmerizing, although I should caution that it might hit a bit too close to home for folks who have recently gone through a similar experience.  The young woman in question, Brittany Pietsch, clearly anticipates the bad news that is coming and seems poised to counter the people sharing this news at every turn—asking them for specific explanations (which they’re either unable or unwilling to give) about why she’s being let go and why this news is being delivered to her by two total strangers, instead of her actual manager.  In short, she asks almost all of the questions most of us would likely grapple with when facing this kind of situation, and then goes a step farther by publishing a recording of the entire conversation for the whole world to see.

So here’s the million-dollar question. Should this action on her part be viewed as a brave decision to stand up for herself and raise awareness around these types of discussions that usually occur behind closed doors?  Or was this instead an impetuous maneuver that could be viewed as naive, combative, or self-serving—and/or one that might severely damage her prospects of landing a new job in the future?

While I’m sure there are people out there would passionately argue both sides of this debate, I’ll let you watch the clip and draw your own conclusions.  Either way, however, I’d caution any of you facing a similar situation to carefully consider any content you share about a layoff on social media since it will most certainly “go down on your permanent record” as the old saying goes— and be something that any future hiring manager and recruiter could easily turn up in a background check, when Googling your name.

Luckily, aside from some intense examples like the one above, I’m also seeing plenty of other postings out there where people are expressing more positive, forward-looking thoughts about their employment situation.  If you search for phrase like “my position was eliminated” in the Posts section of LinkedIn, for example, you’ll find quite a few people who balance their regret about a recent layoff with strong statements of gratitude about their last employer, the people they worked with, and the valuable experience they acquired.  This is the way.  As tempting as it is to vent some steam on social media, it’s ultimately in your own best interests to keep things glass-half-full when it comes to your public persona, since that’s the type of energy that the people in your network—as well as future employers—will respond to much more favorably.

Just some food for thought, given the viral video referenced above and enormous swath of opinions I’ve seen published this past week on the topic!