The force is with Facebook

So I’ve already (over?) analysed corposting on Facebook, and as part of these various analyses I identified a number of non-personal statuses, and will now embark upon my rant about “causes”.

The cause posts are many, and surprisingly deceptive. They can be personal, charitable, feel-good, or just plain obscure. They always involve a photo. This is because this used to be the only way to share stuff on Facebook, and seems to have been retained either because people still aren’t aware that statuses can be shared, or because they take up more room, or because they are visually more appealing and intriguing than a ream of text. Though they usually include that too.

Most of them are about trying to achieve something, some sort of recognition, though some of them seem much more obscure, and some you do have to wonder why they exist – they clearly seem desperate for likes, comments and shares, but why? To spam you? But that can be stopped by unliking the post or the account.

The personal ones you can see why people do it – they want something done. There are two examples of this:

Firstly, the woman who was “so enraged” about someone’s bad driving that she took a photo of the car and had her own rant about what had occurred. It “went viral” (it was a slow day for local news, and they wanted to get on the whole “social media is cool and a new force for crime-fighting and stuff that we don’t understand” bandwagon).

Did it achieve anything?

Well, not really. The post did not help identify the driver – the numberplate did. And there hasn’t been a vigilante group going round to right a wrong – she reported it to the police (entirely separately to the Facebook post) who are (again, entirely separately) investigating. This could all have been done without the Facebook post. Indeed, the local “news” weblink says that the driver was “shamed”, despite not identifying the driver, despite obscuring the numberplate, despite not actually asking the driver if he was shamed.

And when you look at the prose to the photo, you have to wonder exactly how shamed the driver was. There was a bit of tail-gating; a bit of swearing; a few hand gestures. It’s not right, but it’s hardly at the worst end of the wrongs. Indeed, the tailgating aside, there is probably actually no law broken – and we only have her word to say that he was tailgating, which can be quite a subjective assessment. Who’s to say that he wasn’t entirely in the right to make some gestures – perhaps she pulled out in front of him, straddled two lanes preventing him from passing. She seems like someone a bit too desperate for attention for this to be an entirely cut-and-dried story.

Secondly, there is the dead man and the virgin. Well, the Virgin Media. A chap uploaded a photo of the bill that his deceased father-in-law had received from Virgin. Obviously they ‘tagged’ Virgin in the post, meaning that Virgin’s notifications will have been going wild. They also mentioned and tagged Sky, Virgin’s competitor, in the post extolling the benefits of Sky – presumably trying not only to get Virgin to right the wrong, but get a freebie from sky. But the basics of it were that they had informed Virgin of the death, but that Virgin had still sent a bill.

There could be many reasons behind this. Knowing how these big corporations work, this could simply have been a case of a note being put on the wrong account or the wrong screen; it could have been taking a little time to process; it could actually have been a perfectly legitimate ‘account closing’ bill – afterall, they are still perfectly entitled to be paid up until the date of death: it would still be a debt owed by the estate; these things don’t just get written off (except for the goodwill of the company). So we really don’t know what has happened here. Has the chap even questioned this with Virgin? From the blurb in the posting, no. He merely informed Virgin of the death. A single contact. But this “went viral”. [If you read the news story, Virgin have apologised and promised to “bring the account to a close more sensitively” – a strong suggestion that in fact the charges were perfectly legitimate, but that the poster thought they would just waive them. The poster has not removed the post or updated it to reflect the apology.]

Now, that – of itself – is a curious thing. What is “going viral”? I regularly log on and see that half a dozen or so people like my status. On Twitter some of my comments get retweeted a dozen or so times. Are they viral? At what point is a critical mass achieved that seems to perpetuate the post, and what is the value to be achieved to have hit internet stardom? The Virgin post hit around 25,000 shares in 24 hours. Well done. But it’s not Gangnam Style, is it?

And it shows as much about the phenomenon as the cause. When you read the comments to the post, they are not about the validity of the post. They are all “Oh my gosh John [or whatever], you got 15,000 likes in a few hours!” “Oh my gosh John, you’re like an internet star!”. Even John joined in with these, entirely losing focus on exactly what he was trying to achieve – rather than getting a bill written off, he was wanting to hit his next target of 30,000.

I didn’t share.

I don’t share these things. I don’t care about these things really.

But, as with everything (see the films post) these are getting more and more extreme.

There are a lot of vigilante posts, often about people who have been abusing dogs or forcing them to fight. It will usually be a photo of “the perpetrators” (though how correct these are is open to question) or “the victim” together with some comment along the lines of “We need to find these people, they were spotted down such-and-such a lane in so-and-so town with seventy West Highland terriers, and were whipping those poor dogs with fishing wire.” Or some other such nonsense. One of the more recent ones I saw contained a lot of expletives and threats to kill. Now that’s just illegal.

Whether or not the dog has been injured or a simple stock photo used is open to question; as is how old the ‘cause’ – almost weekly I have one friend or another share a picture claiming that this week – like every week before – is Mental Health Awareness week so that no-one actually knows which week is Mental Health Awareness week. Perhaps the photo was one taken by an aggrieved neighbour who had not see dog fighting but was just getting a bit fed up with the neighbour parking in front of their drive. To ‘get their own back’ they turned to social media to have a rant, bad-mouth the person a bit, and before they know it, it is out of hand. Because of the ‘share’ nature, it may lose the identity of the original poster, and still be floating round years later; but more often than not it won’t lose that identity. Unless the poster is absolutely certain as to what has happened; they shouldn’t be posting as to do so would expose them to a claim of libel or malicious falsehood; and indeed those of the sharers. This is why we have the police rather than relying on self-determination and execution.

That said, the phenomenon itself can only be short-lived. Not everyone’s bill will go viral. The first is a novelty, after that it’s just boring. Yes it may be the most current form of ‘chain letters’ but they disappear for a long time before a short flurry of activity and they are gone again.

The latest development of these, perhaps the most extreme of combinations, was one I saw recently – it was the picture of a child. If you just read the initial blurb, it explains the name of the child, the age and what he enjoys studying at school. It’s only when you click ‘read more’ that you end up with a full-blown essay. I didn’t read it. I couldn’t be bothered - it was SO long. It was clear that it was a 'cause' so I fleetingly glanced to try to identify what type of cause. And this was the curious thing. The post must have had well over a thousand words of copy to it; yet it didn’t seem to make a point except for “share this if you are against child cruelty”. It didn’t point you to a charity, or give you any hints or tips on how to spot child cruelty; it just circulated a very long, meandering, somewhat prosaic tale of an anonymous child who suffered some very terrible things.

But then again, people will buy these “Misery-Lit” novels (also call It-Lit or Pelzer Phenomenon novels after Dan Pelzer’s AChild Called It). However it gets worse. I have often been told to “Share this if you are against such-and-such” or prompted or induced to share with comments such as “it only takes one second to click share, 99% of people won’t share it – will you show compassion?” this particular one stated “share this if you are against child cruelty. If you don’t share this you clearly endorse child cruelty and probably beat your own child”.

Now aside from that being false, and a threat, this is positively chilling. Yes, the only person realistically who will know that I didn’t share it is myself (unless my friends are keeping such scary stalkingish attention to my shares); but to be forced with threats by an unknown person to share something which if I don’t, it will be assumed that I am a fully paid-up child abuser is absolutely unacceptable. I’m sure the people who write them don’t realise quite how unacceptable their lobbying tactics are – particularly when I get little or no warning as to the harrowing story I am about to read when I open the ‘read more’, though this is something which Facebook itself is struggling with as recently showed with the beheading videos.

 

Whoever writes these posts clearly does not do so professionally. They are rambling, self-indulgent and ultimately pointless and ungrammatically syntaxed blurb. Yes, I realise the irony in writing that in a rambling, self-indulgent and poorly grammartised blog where I have a tendency to make up my own words. The poor grammar is probably as bad as the fact that people are ‘causing’ in my own living room without me inviting them in. Or perhaps I do consent simply by opening my web-browser.

One of my friends on Twitter the other night was bemoaning himself the newsfeed on Facebook. His moan was the fact that he had “liked” a number of bands so that people seeing his ‘about’ tab would be able to get a good grip of his type of music. He was complaining that his newsfeed was more and more spammed by these bands that he may like but did not necessarily want to hear from. He wanted a way to be able to filter these out, so there was a separate ‘likefeed’. I would like a separate ‘spamfeed’ to shove these posts that, albeit posted or shared by friends, clearly has no relevance to their life whatsoever let alone mine. They seem to be able to “other-box” messages that are clearly meant for me, even though they are sent from people outside my friendlist; something which I only found out the other day when I stumbled upon a couple of messages in there that had been waiting a month or so. Once again, good communication Facebook!

I’m sure the fad will die a slow death and be replaced by another, hopefully much more funny fad. Perhaps it is time to bring back planking, quickly followed by news reports about how absurd or even dangerous planking is.