“…who have taught me that as long as you can, you can beat the living hell out of a woman and other women will still love you.”
"Curation is one of the big changes in blog characteristics that I’ve noticed in the past few years. People don’t blog in the way that they blogged in 2006 anymore. They mainly post links to stuff now and annotate. So now there’s this phenomenon, this idea, that you are what you link to. But the type of self-expression that’s been happening on the Web is not actually anyone’s experience as a human; it’s just decorations without any true expression of life experience."
- Jonathan Harris, quoted on design mind (via somethingchanged)
(via somethingchanged)
The Fear of Missing Out
I’ve been watching Twitter and Ditto feeds of people at SxSW, and, from a distance, I get a distinct sense of the social anxiety and FOMO that’s going on there. “FOMO” stands for “Fear of Missing Out” and it’s what happens everywhere on a typical Saturday night, when you’re trying to decide if you should stay in, or muster the energy to go to the party. At SxSW I see people wondering if they’re at the wrong party—the party where they are is lame, feels uncool, has too much brand advertising or doesn’t have anyone there they’d want to hook up with—and so they move on to the next party where they have to wait in line too long, can’t get a beer, or don’t find their friends, and so move on to the next venue where…and so on.
FOMO is a great motivator of human behavior, and I think a crucial key to understanding social software, and why it works the way it does. Many people have studied the game mechanics that keep people collecting things (points, trophies, check-ins, mayorships, kudos). Others have studied how the neurochemistry that keeps us checking Facebook every five minutes is similar to the neurochemistry fueling addiction. Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on. You’re home alone, but watching your friends status updates tell of a great party happening somewhere. You are aware of more parties than ever before. And, like gym memberships, adding Bergman movies to your Netflix queue and piling up unread copies of the New Yorker, watching these feeds gives you a sense that you’re participating, not missing out, even when you are.
