A physical scientist encounters social media
We mentioned, some weeks ago, that our webmaster had been assigned to develop the Five Colors S&T social media presence. This wasn’t because he’s an expert already, but because he wasn’t; in fact his inclinations tend toward weekends reading eighteenth-century essays by the light of a kerosene lamp. We thought that, apart from the fact that he generally does a decent job of anything, it would be good for him to do something unfamiliar and especially to have contact with people not like him. As Calvin’s dad (from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) would say, he’d build character.
Of course, dropping any scientist into a new situation means he’ll study it and develop theories and conclusions. Here are some of his first observations.
We may conveniently divide up most of the Facebook posters into four (nonexclusive) classes:
- Sports fans: while I don’t have the sports-fan gene among my DNA, I recognize it as widespread, and no doubt I’m missing out on an important aspect of human experience. Those who post every score in a high-scoring game do tend to clog up the page, though, and it can get confusing when three different games are going on simultaneously.
- Foodies: not just those who aspire to sophistication, but including those whose tastes run to (for instance) Oreo-worship. My own preferences for things to eat are not so strong that I feel I must display them to the world, and it’s not a field Five Colors expects to get into, but I don’t find it terribly annoying. One could wish, though, that these people knew some of the tips (developed by ad people over the years) to make food pictures actually appetizing. And people do not look good while eating (the tabloids know this very well).
- Diarists: at their best these are in the fine tradition of Pepys and Boswell, though some of them go into much more detail than seems necessary. Certainly Facebook, as well as other products of this digital-social age, make keeping a diary much easier than it used to be. I can also define the special-event diarist, who normally posts little but when going on a trip (for example) will provide pictures and a running commentary. Our consultants are more essayists than diarists, though, and so find the blog a more congenial medium.
- Activists, political and otherwise. I don’t restrict this label to the altogether more professional and intimidating creatures we know here inside the Beltway. I include those who share strong opinion posts on a politician, celebrity, cause, or perhaps current event, which normally gather supporting comments from like-minded people. This is the practice about which I have the most misgivings. A Facebook post just does not allow much more complexity or subtlety than a bumper sticker, and the sharing of slogans among the faithful really does not amount to informed political debate. I wonder if a social medium can be developed that will connect people who disagree. . .
Our first post on the official Five Colors smartphone quickly generated likes from Romania, Tokyo, New York and Indonesia, which certainly got us thinking. Some of our likers are specifically interested in old cameras as such, which I can appreciate, even though our emphasis is on using them instead of admiring them. Others are young artists, often posting a sort of visual stream-of-consciousness. The latter are not like us at all, and will require much more study before we begin to understand them a little. But the contact with them so far has alone almost been worth our entire effort.
