Is Your Virtual Life Better Than Your Real Life?
[ 6 Comments ]Posted on April 3, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, April 3rd, 2009Or: Why I’m Probably Getting Married On Facebook
Tell me if you’ve noticed any of the following in your behaviour over the past couple of years: You no longer bother remembering phone numbers, you just put them in your phone. You’re talking to a friend about a movie, can’t remember the star, and turn to Wikipedia or the IMDB. Someone has seemed annoyed that you actually phoned them instead of texting or “Facebooking” them. You can’t seem to get into books like you used to. You’ve joked that you have a disorder because of your poor recall or attention. Nicholas Carr has written a few articles addressing this topic, including Is Google Making Us Stupid? in the Atlantic Monthly, and Computing The Cost in The Sun Magazine. This topic is nothing new, this 1998 Science Daily article touches on it. And the book iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind
Are You Really Stupid, Or Do You Just Have Poor Taste?
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on March 5, 2009 by admin in Music
Thursday, March 5th, 2009Correlating Facebook Data With SAT Scores
If you’ve ever been mystified (as I have) by the popularity of Beyonce or Lil Wayne, there’s a fairly good chance that you’re just intelligent. Or at least that you would do well on the SAT. Caltech graduate student Virgil Griffith has gotten considerable attention for his tongue-in-cheek but slightly scientific analysis of how intelligence affects tastes in music and books. He plotted aggregated Facebook data against average SAT scores from various schools, and came up with graphs for both Books That Make You Dumb and Music That Makes You Dumb. Personally, I think you can be stupid and still like Beethoven (who was most popular with students that scored around 1400), but it is somehow telling that “I don’t read” and “Dan Brown” correlated with students who scored around 1000. I also have to admit I was a little surprised to not see The Decemberists over on the 1400 side given their popularity with ad-industry types and Stephen Colbert; and these are indeed troubled times when the Bible hangs down with the 900 scores while “Lolita” tops the smarty-pants reading lists, with an SAT/popularity score around 1300.
Are You A Facebook “Friend Whore”?
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on February 14, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, February 14th, 2009Or are you just REALLY popular?
I was picking on a friend recently about the fact that he had over 300 friends on Facebook. I asked him “Honestly, how many of those people could you or would you call for lunch this week?” He had to admit the number was a little lower than 300 people. Which got me thinking: what is a normal number of friends to have on Facebook? I’m reasonably well-networked in real life and have done a fair amount of events planning, so I’m acutely aware that a reasonably sociable person has less than ten close friends, and a range of acquaintances that typically extends to around 150 people. I’ve only used my Facebook account regularly for a few weeks, have around 60 “friends”, and am about to start adding and deleting with a little more focus. According to various small-scale studies, having an excessively large number of friends on Facebook suggests that one may have poor social judgment or be narcissistic. Any attempt to establish an optimal number of Facebook friends will have to factor in things like age, social class, and whether the person was an early user, when Facebook was college-only. These early users may have hundreds of friends, in spite of the fact that they rarely use the site. And then there are trophy friends to consider. How many friends do you have? What are they really worth? Well, according to this article, about 37 cents.
Faceboom: Over Forty On Facebook
[ 4 Comments ]Posted on February 11, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009With the recent spike in users over 40 on Facebook, I’ve watched some funny things playing out, so I thought I’d share some important notes with the boomer crowd. First of all, “LOL” does not mean “Lots of Love”. So when you post something like “Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that [...]
With the recent spike in users over 40 on Facebook, I’ve watched some funny things playing out, so I thought I’d share some important notes with the boomer crowd. First of all, “LOL” does not mean “Lots of Love”. So when you post something like “Hey everyone, I just wanted to let you know that grandpa passed away last night. I’ll let you know about funeral arrangements. LOL“, it comes across a little differently than you intended. Much like the story going around recently in which the guy shares: “my 8-year-old sister proudly declared that she knows that ‘WTF’ means ‘Wow, That’s Funny’ and has been using it all over the internet“. When you’re using Facebook, just rememeber, you’re not grandma, and you’re not an 8-year-old girl. “Poking” someone isn’t dirty, but it’s not especially purposeful, either. And that “Wall-to-wall” thing? Yeah. Everyone can read it. Stop typing sweet nothings to your best friend’s girlfriend. We all find it pretty amusing, but people get killed over this sort of stuff. And lastly, drunk Facebooking is just like drunk e-mailing or drunk dialing. Only worse, for two reasons: 1.) You can “Facebook” somebody without having their e-mail OR their number, and 2.) Everyone is watching. Anyone have an amusing Facebook story?
This Twit Won’t Twitter
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on February 5, 2009 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Thursday, February 5th, 2009I’ve created sample accounts on over thirty social networking sites as research for clients, which is why I’ve watched the recent explosion on Facebook of users over forty with considerable amusement*. I remember well the feeling I got when, as an 18-year-old, I went from being so far on the fringe of pop culture that [...]
I’ve created sample accounts on over thirty social networking sites as research for clients, which is why I’ve watched the recent explosion on Facebook of users over forty with considerable amusement*. I remember well the feeling I got when, as an 18-year-old, I went from being so far on the fringe of pop culture that there wasn’t a name for it, to suddenly being called “Punk” by “normal” people. Just about as soon as I got used to the idea that maybe I WAS punk, everyone suddenly started taking the worst aspects of whatever I was and basing whole music genres and movies on it. Before I knew it, my friends and I had gotten normal just to avoid the creepy older people that were mimicking us. This must be a little bit like what it feels like to be an 18-24 year old MySpace or FaceBook user the past few years. First they had to watch the oldsters creep in on MySpace, pimping out their pages like high-schoolers. Recently MySpace feels like 4am at a 30-year high school reunion; only the socially inept and drunk late-comers are still hanging around. Facebook should be suffering a similar fate by mid-year, leaving kids to Twitter desperately in a difficult economy. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see new text message pricing plans that gouge these users. I for one don’t see myself opening my mobile device up to this kind of shenanigans, causing the return of the nearly-extinct fail whale (pictured here). Maybe I’ll take up knitting and join Ravelry. Any suggestions for where to go with my social networking addiction?
*Confession: I’ve used Facebook addictively the last few weeks myself.