Miss Ashley Pants

So… Facebook’s been having research parties with our posts.

Yep. Your favorite digital therapeutic soap box has been tinkering with your think muscles by tweaking your feed. Ya know, I got used to the whole privacy invasion thing a while ago (sort of) when I finally realized that privacy settings are only for those who don’t know the workarounds. Or own Facebook. Or who pay the guy who owns Facebook. So, while part of me’s still in denial that anything I type can be seen by a bunch of dudes in hoodies, the other part has just been slowly shying away from sharing anything too-personal. Dog? Yep. Family photos? Alright. Pictures of food and nature walks? Sure, why not. But endless selfies only reveal my true vanity and excessive posts about celebrities and T.V. shows make me look like I can’t handle the real world and thus must constantly escape into artificial worlds to cope (which I totes do – but who needs to know that?)

Plus there’s this whole thing:

Although I didn’t know they’d use these rights to turn us into psychological lab rats, I did volunteer hunger games style once before on an actual Facebook post – by saying that I wished they’d consolidate my feed: funny, happy posts at the top and morose posts below. That way, I’d be in a better mood to deal with the life-lamenting once I scrolled down. Or just, ya know, not read them at all.

What Facebook actually did was kind of like that, but not.

They took advantage of what that screencap above says, and organized newsfeeds of random folk (allegedly using a computer – not some seedy scientists poring over your posts), and weeded out status updates that were emotional in a negative way – and then did the opposite, including only emotional ones for a period of time. Then they analyzed what effect it had on a fellow Facebooker’s own internet sharing.

As one might expect, drama mongering was indeed contagious – even online. The “if it bleeds it leads” concept (similar to what’s used in the news), seemed to make for popular and more active updating about equally low vibe content. But when users were exposed to mostly happy statuses, devoid of negativity, they simply STFU. Yeah. I’ve been that guy before. In the past year or so, though, I’ve gone from emotionally infectious to more of a water-off-a-zuck’s-back when shiz goes down.

I guess this study leaves me with only a shit ton of questions – starting with the variables. Did the fact that they did this during the depressing winter season have any effect? If so – will they repeat it during spring or summer to see if seasonal changes have anything to do with “your brain on Facebook”? And – as for the computer system that weeded out updates – it didn’t sound very foolproof. The claim was that “one negative or one positive” word could count it as good or bad. Does that account for all my friends and I who have so much sarcasm dripping from our social interactions that we need a mop? And finally – are they doing it again this month? Targeting us single folk with all the newborn and wedding updates?

They’re definitely doing exactly that.

Still, I totes vote for the bipolar news feed.

Let’s put that Orwellian study of yours to some good use, kaythx.