Assignment 2 - 'Like' Everything On Facebook

So, not unlike many people in latter part of 2014, I no longer utilize Facebook at a high level – if at all. My attentions have shifted to other social media or in some areas I've gone off grid completely, therefore making the control of this experiment, at least in my case, a bit slanted. That preface is only stated to lay the foundation for what was concluded by “Liking” everything on Facebook for a few days.

The other options available (hiding and not liking) I essentially already do on a daily basis by ignoring my Facebook page. I have to assume that my experience is similar to most people who try to perform the high wire act of clicking ‘Like’ on everything. My news feed became saturated with crap that totally drowned out any personal connections, content mills dominated my feed, and I had a bit of awkwardness due to liking some pics that a very distant acquaintance decided to share with the planet of his new wife in a bikini. However, I anticipated the weirdness of liking everyone’s photos and posts about how Obama is cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. I also projected the polarizing views that would populate my page that find me algorithmically by feigning passion about everything regardless of consequence.  However, there were some things I did not anticipate.

• While nobody hit me up to ask if I was hacked, I did get a surprising amount of friends and family ask if I changed political parties –although none were specific about who I was changing to or from. As someone who has never been a staunch advocate of either side of the aisle, that was perplexing.

• The difference in mobile feeds and desktop feeds was significant. It’s as if Facebook assumes you think more critically at your computer than on your phone so they try to “pull a fast one on ya” much less frequently with desktop content.

• Interact or die! Once something is ‘Liked’ and triggers a call to action or related post or an associated advertisement which is then ‘Liked’ or ignored, then the real assault begins as Facebook will continue a relentless campaign to get interaction predicated on that ‘Like’. There was no way to call of the dogs of follow-up posts as they continued to pile up, ambivalent to falling on deaf ears.    

Assignment 1 - 3 Retweets

I found three tweets that were very difficult to not want to know more information about. That is the key for me, more than a clever one liner by a comedian.  I want to treat a tweet like a long headline that either makes me invest in further research or realize that it is inconsequential to my life and interests. 

A tweet from the Libertarian Republic stated: Parents Convicted Of The Same Crime - Male Gets Jail, Female Gets Off. This was worth looking deeper into because injustice fascinates me and I love to get stories that would usually be buried by some political minded media outlet. Reverse gender inequality is pretty rare so it was worth checking out.

A tweet from The Onion's sports blog was a bit more meta and clever than normal, so I felt the need to retweet it. It said that the Baltimore Ravens' Biggest Strength: The NFL’s outlook on domestic violence prior to August 28, 2014. This is a tongue in cheek reference to a Ray Rice incident that happened in the off season with his wife that the NFL handled poorly. I found the headline and the article to be very poignant so long as you're in on the joke.

And finally a tweet from i09 stated that the first successful demonstration of brain to brain communication in humans has been achieved. This is massive for many reasons ranging from ESP human evolution to the very cool idea of telepathy becoming science reality rather than science fiction. A groundbreaking concept that was worth sharing, I felt.