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> I felt the urge to react when I read them and bravely restrained myself. You feel an urge to react at bizarro twilight zone non-sequitur text posts? I'm sit

> I felt the urge to react when I read them and bravely restrained myself. You feel an urge to react at bizarro twilight zone non-sequitur text posts? I'm sitting here trying to fathom why millions of people would even react to something like that. Like… what was "thumbs up" worthy in any of those?

erulabs 5y ago
I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!". Millions of people want other people to know they too are just like them. Facebook's algorithm is optimized for engagement - but people aren't desperate to engage - they are desperate to be engaged with.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deathanatos 5y ago
  > I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!" No, and I feel like I'm explaining to the AI what human behavior looks like here. Yes, the sort of meme discussion you quote is fairly common, but it's not just "common thing", it's some sort of shared experience that's probably private; you're not sure if everyone else experiences it, but saying you experience it might sound weird to others, and the (usually unneeded) thoughts of potential embarrassment maybe prevents you from doing so. Until someone does, in such a post, and yeah, those take off as the day's lucky 10000 are all sighing a collective "I'm not weird!" sigh of relief. Eye floaters come to mind as an example. But … that's not the case here. "Who the heck sleeps with a Fan (sic) and AC on?". Heck, that odd capitalization just makes it even more uncanny valley. Like Zuckerberg really is a robot, and he's just tried a new social subroutine out on me. Who the heck eats Food?
  - raunak 5y ago
    Have you ever considered the fact that because clearly much of the world's population _does_ in fact comment on these posts, that _they_ have said normal "human behavior" and not you or I? We're the outlier on Facebook.
    - deathanatos 5y ago
      While several million is a lot, yes, it is a far cry from the 7B people in the world, or the just shy of 3B users FB claims to have. The question is how many ignored that post; it could very well be that they out number the ones who commented, and those who comment are the outliers. It could also be sockpuppets are commenting to drum up the numbers to make the post look hotter than it actually is.
      - rmbyrro 5y ago
        I don't get why you're being down voted. It's a fair argument. We really don't know how many ignored the post. Yes, since Facebook picked to promote it, probably a low percentage ignored. But what is "low percentage" to Facebook algo? Maybe usual average is 90% ignores without "engaging". With this one, "only" 60% ignored. Which means the majority are not triggered by this sort of thing. This is only speculation, but just to illustrate the argument may be valid indeed and these networks like Facebook end up giving an impression that something is "normal" across humans, but they're actually not.
  - raydev 5y ago
    > Who the heck eats Food? Now you're getting it, although you need to think of something that most people do, and then mock them. The key is to trigger confused/shock engagement. Plenty of people are obviously falling for this.
  - wyager 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Who the heck eats Food? You're on the right path, but you're missing the milquetoast sting at the end; something that's controversial, or slightly embarrassing that makes the activity seem niche, but really isn't. "Who the heck eats Food with the Fridge door open?" - or "Who the heck eats Food slowly, so the crinkly wrapper doesn't wake the kids?". Yoi can find the same sort of viral drivel under "relatable tweets" on Twitter.
  - marcus_holmes 5y ago
    you have what I call a "Kardashian problem" - I don't understand why the Kardashians are popular. Who the hell would be interested in these people? Why would anyone waste any time watching them or paying them any attention? And yet people clearly do, as the Kardashians are (or were) making millions from other people's interest in them. Clearly it's not their problem, it's that I don't understand their market. If you're struggling to understand why this FB page has such an enormous following,the answer isn't that "they're doing it wrong, people aren't like that" - because they're clearly not wrong, and enough people are like that to give them that huge following. The answer is that you don't understand that market.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      I know the name "Kim", and I know they are in plural, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart - or give any reason why they should be interesting either. The word "implants" springs to mind, before my brain shuts down to what I perceive as infinite stupidity overload. I understand there's a significant number of people who quite clearly excel at getting through life worrying about rather different things than myself. Facebook certainly knows where the numbers are.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brendoelfrendo 5y ago
I mean, the "who here has never had a DUI?" question is tailored for engagement. The actual % of people who have had a DUI is really low, and so the number of people who can engage with that honestly is really high. Then there's the fact that DUIs tend to evoke a strong moral response, so people will dive into the comments to wag the finger at all the DUI havers. We're all here commenting on posts about tech and tech-adjacent concerns, so the community is pretty niche and interesting (to us). This is what you get when someone crafts content for literally everyone, and you'd be right to find it simultaneously bland and bizarre. But people, it turns out, do engage with it.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Reminds me of those posts from a few years ago that were like: "[Simple math problem, like what's 5 x 4?]: 95% of people can't solve this! I bet you can't either!" With hundreds of thousands of commenters "engaging" with it. I don't understand anything about this behavior. 1. What does the poster have to gain from a post like that, 2. What do all the commenters have to gain, and 3. What does SocialMediaCompany gain? The promise of social media is long dead. It seems to now just be bots (or people who behave as bots) responding to bots (or people who behave as bots)... everywhere.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    The poster gains by getting a large amount of interaction with their page, which is certainly a ranking factor for future posts. e.g. SocialMediaCompany will say "This new post by Poster will get higher placement because their previous posts were enjoyed (interacted with) by many people, and therefore Poster must be producing good content."
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    Well, for (1) the poster gets engagement from low-effort posts. The end game is usually monetizing their social media presence, and though there's multiple ways to do that, they all involve getting eyes on your page. Your (2) should be evident from the phrasing of your example: if 95% of people can't do it, people want to prove they're in the 5%. They get a few minutes' distraction, some self-satisfaction, and maybe some conversation. I'm not going to play psychologist, but that's enough for some folks. And it really only has to be some: if your post is seen 32 million people and 30 million dismiss it, you still got 2 million people to engage. (3) is, I guess, money again? Active users means SocialMediaCompany can tout the value of their platform to advertising partners. The bot problem is a good observation, though, because platforms with a reputation for bots are less valuable to advertisers who want human attention. People who act like bots are probably great for advertisers, though, so idk; maybe that's a wash.
piyh 5y ago
Imagine someone asked that at an informal gathering of friends and people you only met once or twice before. It'd make good conversation.
14 5y ago
I totally agree with you. These posts all seem like a way to scape data about me. Why would anyone want to know if someone else had a DUI? If I sold insurance I would like to know that about you so I can increase your cost and lower my risk. All these questions seem to ask questions you are better off not answering because it builds a profile about you. I just don’t get it but definitely see aunts and coworkers who are totally into posts like these. Bizarre

erulabs 5y ago

I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!". Millions of people want other people to know they too are just like them. Facebook's algorithm is optimized for engagement - but people aren't desperate to engage - they are desperate to be engaged with.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deathanatos 5y ago
> I mean, you must see the primal appeal - essentially the posts are "haha, who else does {{COMMON_THING}}?!" No, and I feel like I'm explaining to the AI what human behavior looks like here. Yes, the sort of meme discussion you quote is fairly common, but it's not just "common thing", it's some sort of shared experience that's probably private; you're not sure if everyone else experiences it, but saying you experience it might sound weird to others, and the (usually unneeded) thoughts of potential embarrassment maybe prevents you from doing so. Until someone does, in such a post, and yeah, those take off as the day's lucky 10000 are all sighing a collective "I'm not weird!" sigh of relief. Eye floaters come to mind as an example. But … that's not the case here. "Who the heck sleeps with a Fan (sic) and AC on?". Heck, that odd capitalization just makes it even more uncanny valley. Like Zuckerberg really is a robot, and he's just tried a new social subroutine out on me. Who the heck eats Food?
- raunak 5y ago
  Have you ever considered the fact that because clearly much of the world's population _does_ in fact comment on these posts, that _they_ have said normal "human behavior" and not you or I? We're the outlier on Facebook.
  - deathanatos 5y ago
    While several million is a lot, yes, it is a far cry from the 7B people in the world, or the just shy of 3B users FB claims to have. The question is how many ignored that post; it could very well be that they out number the ones who commented, and those who comment are the outliers. It could also be sockpuppets are commenting to drum up the numbers to make the post look hotter than it actually is.
    - rmbyrro 5y ago
      I don't get why you're being down voted. It's a fair argument. We really don't know how many ignored the post. Yes, since Facebook picked to promote it, probably a low percentage ignored. But what is "low percentage" to Facebook algo? Maybe usual average is 90% ignores without "engaging". With this one, "only" 60% ignored. Which means the majority are not triggered by this sort of thing. This is only speculation, but just to illustrate the argument may be valid indeed and these networks like Facebook end up giving an impression that something is "normal" across humans, but they're actually not.
- raydev 5y ago
  > Who the heck eats Food? Now you're getting it, although you need to think of something that most people do, and then mock them. The key is to trigger confused/shock engagement. Plenty of people are obviously falling for this.
- wyager 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > Who the heck eats Food? You're on the right path, but you're missing the milquetoast sting at the end; something that's controversial, or slightly embarrassing that makes the activity seem niche, but really isn't. "Who the heck eats Food with the Fridge door open?" - or "Who the heck eats Food slowly, so the crinkly wrapper doesn't wake the kids?". Yoi can find the same sort of viral drivel under "relatable tweets" on Twitter.
- marcus_holmes 5y ago
  you have what I call a "Kardashian problem" - I don't understand why the Kardashians are popular. Who the hell would be interested in these people? Why would anyone waste any time watching them or paying them any attention? And yet people clearly do, as the Kardashians are (or were) making millions from other people's interest in them. Clearly it's not their problem, it's that I don't understand their market. If you're struggling to understand why this FB page has such an enormous following,the answer isn't that "they're doing it wrong, people aren't like that" - because they're clearly not wrong, and enough people are like that to give them that huge following. The answer is that you don't understand that market.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    I know the name "Kim", and I know they are in plural, but wouldn't be able to tell them apart - or give any reason why they should be interesting either. The word "implants" springs to mind, before my brain shuts down to what I perceive as infinite stupidity overload. I understand there's a significant number of people who quite clearly excel at getting through life worrying about rather different things than myself. Facebook certainly knows where the numbers are.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brendoelfrendo 5y ago

I mean, the "who here has never had a DUI?" question is tailored for engagement. The actual % of people who have had a DUI is really low, and so the number of people who can engage with that honestly is really high. Then there's the fact that DUIs tend to evoke a strong moral response, so people will dive into the comments to wag the finger at all the DUI havers. We're all here commenting on posts about tech and tech-adjacent concerns, so the community is pretty niche and interesting (to us). This is what you get when someone crafts content for literally everyone, and you'd be right to find it simultaneously bland and bizarre. But people, it turns out, do engage with it.

ryandrake 5y ago
Reminds me of those posts from a few years ago that were like: "[Simple math problem, like what's 5 x 4?]: 95% of people can't solve this! I bet you can't either!" With hundreds of thousands of commenters "engaging" with it. I don't understand anything about this behavior. 1. What does the poster have to gain from a post like that, 2. What do all the commenters have to gain, and 3. What does SocialMediaCompany gain? The promise of social media is long dead. It seems to now just be bots (or people who behave as bots) responding to bots (or people who behave as bots)... everywhere.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  The poster gains by getting a large amount of interaction with their page, which is certainly a ranking factor for future posts. e.g. SocialMediaCompany will say "This new post by Poster will get higher placement because their previous posts were enjoyed (interacted with) by many people, and therefore Poster must be producing good content."
- brendoelfrendo 5y ago
  Well, for (1) the poster gets engagement from low-effort posts. The end game is usually monetizing their social media presence, and though there's multiple ways to do that, they all involve getting eyes on your page. Your (2) should be evident from the phrasing of your example: if 95% of people can't do it, people want to prove they're in the 5%. They get a few minutes' distraction, some self-satisfaction, and maybe some conversation. I'm not going to play psychologist, but that's enough for some folks. And it really only has to be some: if your post is seen 32 million people and 30 million dismiss it, you still got 2 million people to engage. (3) is, I guess, money again? Active users means SocialMediaCompany can tout the value of their platform to advertising partners. The bot problem is a good observation, though, because platforms with a reputation for bots are less valuable to advertisers who want human attention. People who act like bots are probably great for advertisers, though, so idk; maybe that's a wash.

piyh 5y ago

Imagine someone asked that at an informal gathering of friends and people you only met once or twice before. It'd make good conversation.

14 5y ago

I totally agree with you. These posts all seem like a way to scape data about me. Why would anyone want to know if someone else had a DUI? If I sold insurance I would like to know that about you so I can increase your cost and lower my risk. All these questions seem to ask questions you are better off not answering because it builds a profile about you. I just don’t get it but definitely see aunts and coworkers who are totally into posts like these. Bizarre