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.
This just underscores the tribal nature of human beings. We're not so different from the homo sapiens of 50,000 years ago.
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?
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.
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
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.
1) Proprietary garbage:
While definitely proprietary, "garbage" is at best subjective in most circumstances. However, their recent ham-fisted attempts at forcibly changing the desktop-oriented use pattern of user interaction has a huge steaming pile of market and consumer useability study data behind it to assert that it was "garbage." It was only after having this smeared in their faces that Microsoft has decided to relent, after initial obstinance. IIRC, Unity's and Gnome3's developers are still being obstinate. Microsoft is governed by money, and when people dont buy their stuff, they adapt to make sure people do. FOSS projects are primarily focused on ideological factors-- and when they refuse to accept realities like these, they just become irrelevant, such as they are now, with Mate, Cinnamon, and XFCE4 totally killing them.
2) Everything should be open source when possible:
It should be. By introducing novel or useful concepts and code samples to as wide an audience as possible, the rate of adoption is not hindered by political or financial pressures/constraints. This allows the general population of the planet to make beneficial use of those advances much more quickly, improving human living conditions more expediently.
3) See above; Getting linux kernel running on as many devices as possible increases the whitepaper knowledge base that is available at large, ensuring more developers can get involved with the lowest possible obstacle to entry into the market. See for instance, work being done with neauvou. Nvidia does not want to share information about its secret sauce-- FOSS developers for linux focus energy on MAKING it work, share the results. That work enables other developers wishing to tap the shader units on nVidia cards for computational purposes without having to rely on closed source binary apis, and can get closer to the raw metal as a consequence. Likewise, getting linux kernel running everywhere enables the unlocking of many consumer products that actually house general purpose processing systems so that they can be used in more novel and inventive ways-- see point 2 again.
4) Ubuntu Unity, Ribbon UI and Internet Explorer are crap.
These are all separate and discrete arguments. Not fair claim in one bullet-ed point. Internet Explorer is not a bad browser, per-se--- rather, it does the crime that all browser makers have been making-- Ignoring the W3C and going "lal la la la la la" while they break standards, in order to implement "special features" to make their browsers stand out. Internet explorer just has the financial might of Microsoft behind it, and is a leader in this kind of offense.
Ribbon UI tries to hide useful things under multiple layers of obfuscation to free up some screen real-estate. Functionally, this is little differe3nt from the old contextual menu system, which also relied on such obfuscation. The only difference in the logical sense is the specific method of that obfuscation. Real power users use the shortcut keys. In practice however, since there is no REAL advantage to the ribbon UI, is that it imposes a new barrier to learning and use to seasoned but non-power users of the products impacted, reducing their work performance.
I have already dealt with Unity. See point 1 above.
5) Piracy is good
This is incorrect. That's like saying "Getting angry is good". More, Piracy is the inevitable consequence of abusing the market to create an artificially imposed condition that disadvantages the consumer; the consumer will fight back with piracy. Piracy is neither good nor bad-- it simply is. Like the emotion known as "anger". Many science fiction stories have been penned about the dangers of trying to eradicate "anger" from the human population. It is important, and useful, yet it is neither good nor bad in and of itself. It provides an adrenaline rush and temporarily overrides the logical parts of human elective consciousness, to facilitate fight and flight responses, and provides the fuel to power political movements to
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.
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.
"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.
You're a "planner" type of person and you don't have contact information for people in your circle?
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."
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?
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