I Really Don’t Pay Attention Enough
I would say that on my social media, at least as far as my Facebook goes, my groups are pretty separate. I have groups for my studies abroad, my friends that I hang out with almost every day, and my family. The studies abroad are the only real official “groups” that I have, the other two distinctions are more of a commentary on how those two parts of my life don’t really blend. I would say that the result of my groups not really blending is that I have a feed that ranges dramatically in content. One of my friends posts a lot about racial equality and injustice, while my family tends to share much more lighthearted content (namely cat-related images and videos).
Honestly, I don’t really check Facebook all that much- I’m much more active on Twitter and Tumblr. My Twitter feed is a combination of news articles/updates and non-serious content, as is my Tumblr dash.
On Twitter, I’m most drawn to news articles and non-serious tweets, but I don’t really have a connection to the people who create the content (except for my boss, whose Twitter I also run). I’m not really influenced by my friends on social media since the only social media we have in common that we follow each other on is Facebook. Looking in the other direction though, the Tweets I specifically remember people retweeting were my complaints about people not taking humanities and social sciences, as well as the arts, as seriously as they take STEM fields. The people who retweeted were also in the more CHASS type jobs and studies, so it came across as exasperation that we still have to say things like this and defend our interests as valid and serious, as well as their way of showing support for what I had to say.
I’m not sure how I feel about social media sites having access to information about my social circles. I don’t really care what they try to advertise to me on Facebook, mostly because I only check when I have a notification or a message from someone. I also ignore the promoted tweets on Twitter and really just get annoyed at the ads on Tumblr (it’s the same three to four ads and I have no interest in any of what they are offering). I imagine if I paid more attention, I would probably care more, but I don’t really give any special notice to most of what happens on social media. I do kind of wonder what the information about my boss’s Twitter is- I tend to click on a lot of links to online articles as she follows Vice and Mashable, and I know that is something Twitter tracks.
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That’s interesting and worth considering that depending on what you click and retweet on Twitter, that could affect the content certain accounts perhaps create or what accounts you maybe suggested to follow. Having separate groups makes different content, but do you ever consider sharing content from one group with another?
While reading your post an interesting thought came to mind. I have seemed to notice a pattern of posts on social media similar to your experience. It usually falls into one of two categories: the poster who rants about political, moral or economic issues, or the humorous, “small talk” conversationalist poster. It’s interesting to me how Facebook’s algorithms don’t seem to differentiate in the quantity they display of the two, regardless of how often they post.
I really like your attitude toward social media having your information of your social circle. I think that we are so bombarded by ads everywhere we look anymore that they don’t have as much of an impact on us and they probably have past generations. I think that’s why they show us the same ad multiple times. Great post!