Slashdot Mirror
Emotional Contagion Spread Through Facebook
Daniel_Stuckey sends this quote from Motherboard:
It hopefully doesn't come as a surprise that your friends shape who you are. But we tend to think of that on a micro level: If your close circle of friends tends to have tattoos, wear polo shirts, or say "chill" a lot, it's quite possible that you'll emulate them over time — and they'll emulate you too. But what happens on a macro scale, when your friend circle doesn't just include the dozen people you actually hang out with regularly, but also the hundreds or thousands of acquaintances you have online? All of those feeds may seem filled with frivolities from random people (and they are!) but that steady stream of life updates — photos, rants, slang — are probably shaping you more than you think. A massive Facebook study recently published in PNAS found solid evidence of so-called emotional contagion—emotional states spreading socially, like a virus made of emoji—on the social network.
Turn them off,
Tune them out.
Stay sane.
So given that I post lots of stuff but do not read stuff in the feed, that means I am the sole originator of lots of contagions?
Kindof badass.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Actually, it means you're a narcissist and everyone ignores you 'cause you're an asshole.
Um...is anyone on Slashdot still on Facebook? Can't think of the last time anyone I work with went there...
It's a common thing that very much predates social networks.
...stupid is on a rampage.
This just underscores the tribal nature of human beings. We're not so different from the homo sapiens of 50,000 years ago.
Anyone with a social life is on Facebook. Anyone on Slashdot is a virgin nerd with no friends still living in mommy's basement. So no, those two groups don't intercept.
It would be surprising if they found otherwise. We've had many examples of things like that in the past. One that comes to mind is Diana's death and the unreasonable mass grief and hysteria that came with it. The only difference now is the scale and pervasiveness of the contagion..
There was an incredibly depressing book I once read that talked about something very similar, except it was a social contagion that caused hive-mind behavior (the book called it "the meme"), and the only way to "cure" it was to erase every memory the person had formed since being exposed to the meme
In the book, the entire earth is "infected" with it, and the only non-memed people lived on an isolated moon base (which is where the book takes place)
I tried to find the author or the name of the book on Google, but had no luck
...Really? They decided to use that acronym?
'social' media is a parasitical emergent phenomenon. It requires people to compusively use it in order to maintain itself, and it does this by triggering the reward system for social interaction while it is really anything but social. Even IRC is more social than facebook. The only winning move is not to play.
The fact that it enables trends which normally scale to one circle of friends to go global is not a surprise.
Big deal. Just because people on Facebook tend to post like their Facebook friends, there is no reason to conclude that they continue with that "emotional contagion" of Obama memes and cats and whatnot once they switch to another tab or turn off their computer. A Facebook study can only tell what people do on Facebook anyway.
"the dozen people you actually hang out with regularly" jeezus, who has time to hang out with that many people regularly? Unless work counts i guess.
...As has the number of chars allowed in the Subject Line.
but also the hundreds or thousands of acquaintances you have online?
I have never used Twitter. I have a Facebook account to keep track of people I actually know, mostly old frieds, mybe 50 at most. I do not Facebook with people at work.
The definition of "acquaintance" seems to have changed since I grew up. To me, someone I have never met in human form, nor had any significant conversation with either in person or "on line", is not an "acquaintance".
Luddite Rube, you say? OK, as you say... Involved with professionally "IT" since 1988, high in the IT food chain at a major US Air Force Base...
Yup, I'm a Luddite Rube...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
So the "Empathy Box" from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is real? And now?
his refusal to join the Council makes "our" Rick the "Rickiest Rick there is."
I could have told you years ago
Facebook is a disease.
...I avoid the "reply all" button in email, and I don't respond to writing on bathroom walls.
I still do Slashdot, Flickr, webmail, torrents, all without any concern about social dis-ease or VD from sucking a Fuckface on Twatter.
You're welcome.
I work at airasia. I think it's true. So that, we could share positive things. The world will be better.
air asia viet nam
As a slashdotter, over time you will also absorb a general set of values, which are, for example:
- Microsoft and Windows are proprietary garbage
- Everything should be open source when possible
- We should try to get the Linux kernel running on as many devices as possible
- Ubuntu Unity, Ribbon UI and Internet Explorer are crap
- Piracy is good
- DRM is always trash
- I love IPv6 and Bitcoin
Ask yourself: which one of these you agree with? Maybe quite many -- does it feel like I just read your mind? How many of them have you acquired robotically and not questioned properly?
I spend most of my Internet time on Slashdot and Fark. The major question is: Have I become a cynical asshole because I hang out at Slashdot and Fark or do I hang out at Slashdot and Fark because I already am a cynical asshole?
Slashdot and Fark - The news forums for the discerning cynical asshole!
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
You can also have a facebook account and still stay sane: just restrict your use of the site to 1/2 times a week.
In some ways this is why I like weekly news magazines: there's a lot of noise and turbulence if you follow daily. If you get a weekly then only the main highlights are printed and the amount of drama is reduced.
There's a lot of crap you don't have to worry about and that can just fall by the wayside.
I deleted my Facebook account years ago when they were still focused on college students. What a train wreck that has become to the world.
Uh, you go regularly to a rural pub, where the same 20 people always are when they 'hang out', there being nowhere else to go in a small village? (Well, you sometime run into them at THE shop or THE bank as well...)
1) Do you use Facebook ? Have you ever used Facebook ?
Are you still using Facebook ?
2) If the answer to any of the above questions is YES, you are an idiot.
I am not sure about the box, but we can certainly answer the title question these days. Run Android in a VM, put the device to sleep. Then grep the memory for "electric sheep". For a good answer, test a statistical significant amount of androids . . .
You're a node in a network of douches. It's nothing personal.
26 year old here. No facebook for 3 years.
Though, I'll admit that I am not the average consumer.
No wonder I've been playing Path of Exile so much.
I never wanted to get a FB account and kept saying, "no" when my friends were asking me to join it. That was years ago of course and I finally signed up for FB (about 5-6 years ago I guess) and it seems now that most of my friends hardly ever check FB. Which is REALLY annoying when you set things up (party, or some event) and ask them questions through FB but they don't respond. Since I don't have their phone number(s) and/or email addresses, it frustrates me as a "planner" type of person.
Sounds like they discovered how cultures are developed, maintained, and grow. Next up they may study how social bonds are formed and maintained, perhaps they'll call it "friendship", but more likely they'll refer to it as some sort of "preferential social virus reinforcement."
Your friends do not shape who you are. That may be true for a certain type of person but not for many others. I've had friends that were really bad people in areas that had nothing to do with how they related to me. I do know that there are some people who depend upon social contacts to make a living and that does make them vulnerable. But if your financial condition has nothing to do with people that you associate with then you don't tend to get sucked into their darker deeds or habits.
Many of my friends blindly send around the human insterest stories that are really ads underneath, or are simply sympathy click generators.
it's really the beginning of the end for facebook, they just don't know it.
"when your friend circle doesn't just include the dozen people you actually hang out with regularly, but also the hundreds or thousands of acquaintances you have online"
To me, these are the same people, and it's more like "tens" of people. I don't have online "friends" that aren't my friends in real life.
I would wager the effect noted in the study has a mode somewhere below age 22. Given the adolescent search for identity, the typical middle/high school - even college - is basically an emotional tuberculosis ward. You know, the old kind where they would try anything - open windows, giant bowls of ice and fans - to try and cool things off and stem the epidemic. Most of which doesn't work. What does work is making their media experience symmetric for consumption and production. Give them a way to express themselves in original work and you'd be stunned by the diversity of thought. Their technology of choice - mobile devices - is still heavily weighted towards content consumption. The ability to "share" - the only real innovation in the recent past - does not make them true producers, but mostly reflectors. Better and more accessible content creation on popular devices is the key. Yes, they will first mimic what they've seen in media - their spin on some favorite story - but that will be dropped after a while - and is really no different from what the pros do - the vast majority of noob filmmakers and writers are doing their spin on a genre or the dreaded mashup pitch "it's The Godfather meets Armageddon!" and then they need a second thing to do and originality rears its hydra-like heads.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I've decided that it's the best band name I've heard all hour.
(I"m looking at YOU George R R R R R...)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Every time I read stories about Facebook, Google+, or other social media, I am thankful I don't participate and wonder why the hell anybody does.
Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" back in 1976... it describes exactly the same fracking concept.
Is this not the same thing as fashion? Why is anyone surprised by the same effect, just because it's online?
If self-replicating ideas are memes, what are self-replicating emotional responses?
But the "scary" thing about having "thousands or hundreds of" of friends is ridiculous. Human relations don't scale that big.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
tldr;
What's next? Women running around nakes raping all the men?
Wellll why the fuck not?
This is what the word 'meme' really describes.
It's not that it is online that is surprising. The fact that it is demonstrable is.
You've just described the church.
Set up facebook....link to a sacrificial email account. Offer as little personal data as you can (make 'em work for it) and then post a new pic of your kid once a year like I do for gandma. Never, ever bother to check it more than once a year, and never go back to the dummy email you set up.
Is this not the same as reading and commenting on Slashdot, on a daily basis? Since Slashdot was introduced to me, I think more kindly of Linux and, boy, do I hate Microsoft.
"You are a product of your environment." --Clement Stone
Casteism