I Conducted a Worthless and Ill-Conceived Social Media Experiment That Taught Me Nothing

By now the power of social media is self-evident. Each day people from every corner of the globe use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and a host of other social networking platforms to connect with one another, pursue romantic interests, tell jokes, share recipes, you name it. Every possible form of communication you can imagine is happening at this very moment.

This sheer volume of communication provides with it a massive amount of data, and this data can be used to analyze the behavior and interests of millions of people over a given period of time. Indeed, a simple tweet or Facebook post can contain just beneath the surface a wealth of information about what makes people tick.

With that in mind, I posed a challenge to my Facebook friends: “Like this status if you’ve ever a) ordered eggs over easy at a diner, b) been broken up with, or c) watched The Shawshank Redemption more than once.”

As of writing this, 71 people have liked or reacted to this status. Pretty interesting, right? Wrong. It’s not interesting. It’s not uninteresting either. It just is. The most generous thing I can say about it is that it’s simply a thing that’s no more or less of a thing than anything else. Of my approximately 1,000 Facebook friends, 71 of them have either ordered eggs over easy, been broken up with, or seen The Shawshank Redemption multiple times. Maybe even 2 or all 3 of these things. Good for them, I guess.

I’ve spent hours mulling over this information — if you can even call it that — and there’s simply nothing to glean from it. Some of the problem is in the way I framed it — if I had picked just one thing, I’d be able to say “45 of my Facebook friends have been dumped.” But would that in and of itself have even been worth anything? Most definitely not. In fact, that number would have almost very certainly underestimated the actual number. Pretty much everyone’s been dumped before. The Shawshank Redemption is one of those movies that’s on TV all the time. There’s only so many ways you can get your eggs done. And so forth.

A 72nd person just liked the status, by the way. Okee dokee.

In conclusion, had I put a little more thought into it I’m sure there’s some sort of experiment or survey I could’ve conducted that would’ve contributed something worthwhile or produced anything even marginally intriguing that you’d be reading about instead right now. But this is not that. This is something I put on Facebook when I was bored and procrastinating, without any real plan or vision. Thank you to all 72 people who participated anyway, whatever you thought you were participating in.