Friday 7 February 2014

How to read status updates and tweets.

Since social media has percolated so deep in our lives and our collective psyche, the meanings and inferences associated with our Facebook updates, tweets etc have gained significance. Now relationships, friendships etc are made and broken online. Your chances of getting a smile when you next time meet your significant other depend on your 'Last Seen At' on Whatsapp.

I think the day is not far when social scientists will be taking tjis user data seriously and basing their researches on it. Here are a few ways you too can gain the sociological edge by infering from your BFF, BF, GF or just F's status updates-

1. Inspirational quotes
Most inspirational quotes are directly related to the person's actual situation. This fact may be confirmed by the really specific data which is provided.
Example-
"Never trust others with things that really matter to you especially your favorite book of short stories. I hope the message is clear enough."
Clearly someone took this person's favourie book.

2. Frequent Check-ins
There are people who'd check-in at the nice places they visit and give us good reviews and then there are those who check-in at their own homes, public toilets, nearby paan shops etc. There is a hidden message in those check-ins which we all ignore. We ignore the fact that this person is feeling ignored. It's like ignore-squared! So be a pet and drop a comment on these attention-seeking updates. You will almost see a sense of gratitude in the replies.

3. Instagram (What I had for lunch)
These are just random photo updates which seek out the approval of the audience. They differ from the frequent check-in updates in the sense that as opposed to the former, the instagram-updater already thinks he is popular and these updates are just his ways of pleasing his audience.
It is confirmed by the number of likes and comments on these petty pictures. Coincidentally, almost all of the times, the person uploading these photos is a hot chick.

4. The broken heart update.
This update is characterized with a vague sense of sorrow where the reader is free to speculate on the causes. Here are a few examples-
i- Feeling sad today.
ii- Feeling sad and bored.
iii- Why does he always hurt me?
The commenters are supposed to get worried about the situation and enquire about the details. The trick is to never reveal the details and let the audience worry incessantly. Like in earlier situation, this too is employed by good-looking people or people who think they're pretty.

Do add more patterns in the comments section that you might have come across. Contribute to the research.

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