Head Tale

An interesting article about the ways that Facebook affects our thinking…

We learn to see the present as a “future past” and focus on how we will document, and self-document, even as the events are transpiring around us. And what happens? It distracts us. In the process of tweeting, posting a Facebook status, choosing the right filter for Instagram, and creating a Vine, we have become third parties to the experiences that were meant to include us.

I’m not sure I agree with all of the article’s conclusions.  For example, it implies all Facebook users are self-centered egotists while some research shows that most Facebook behaviour is fairly innocuous and really the only indicator of narcissism  is people who have extreme numbers of friends.  And I’d even dispute that – as someone closing in on 1000 Friends, I attribute that as much to having lived for extended periods in three different provinces in jobs/schools where I had contact with a large number of people – but maybe I’m just in denial about my own narcissism? 😉

Anyhow, in my experience, you get the full range of personality types on Facebook with as many generous, thoughtful people posting interesting, engaging content that may or may not be about themselves.

And of course what you see is also as much a reflection of who is in your Facebook friends list  – I know I’m going to get a lot of political content, a lot about libraries – simply because of who I’ve chosen to be friends with on Facebook.

Timing and geography are factors too – because we used to live in Calgary I’ve seen (and appreciated) a lot of flood-related updates over the past few days but others might not see much about the flood if they are from Newfoundland and living in Ontario for example.)

Here’s a small experiment.  Here are the last ten posts on my Facebook stream as I type this with an attempt to rate each post on a completely arbitrary “Ego” scale of 1-5 with 1 being very low ego content and 5 being completely self-centered…

1. Someone waiting for a family member’s grade eight grad to start (3)
2. Flood update info from Sisika First Nation in Alberta (1)
3. “Do do do do, do dee do do do do… dee dee dee do, do do, dee do do…”  (4 – seems innocent but somebody’s bragging about being at the new Superman movie and I’m jealous so there!)
4. A politician linking to a Margaret Wente G&M article about why we shouldn’t legalize prostitution  (1)
5. A library linking to a tribute to SF writer, Richard Matheson  (1)
6. Someone posting a link to their business (4)
7. Link to a newspaper story about Saskatchewan people helping out in Alberta (2)
8. Link to an anti-uranium story (2)
9. Link to an Amnesty International story about their efforts in Mauritania.  (4 – Amnesty is sort of bragging here I guess.  Also, I’m not too embarrassed to admit I had to Google that country.)
10. Someone posts a few picture of their daughter’s lion costume for  a dance recital.  (4 – although honestly, I think these kinds of posts are often where the “Facebook is for egotists” charges come from.  But really, it’s often as much a matter of volume as far as I’m concerned.  If this person posted nothing but pictures of her kid every day, multiple times per day, that might be a bit much.  But every once in awhile, who cares?  It’s part of the fire hydrant streaming articles and photos and funny cat videos at me all hours of the day.  Big deal.)

Now, where’s that selfie I took in the mirror this morning?   Oh here it is…