On an online forum where I browse, someone had posted a gripe suggesting that everyone that posts should have to provide a minimum amount of information in their post. The gripe was directed at people who were posting pictures of 2 or 3 CDs with a title like "What I bought today". To the griper, posts like these were useless and added nothing to the community. Many of the replies to the gripe were of the mindset, "let people do what they want", which I agree with.
Although I didn’t reply with my comments, I did try to understand and consider the problem without simply thinking, "let them be". I mean, if they’re being stupid, why are they being stupid? Is there a valid reason for them to make such a minimal post? The rationale I came up with is that the post isn’t for everyone, it’s just for them.
The community I am referring to is Reddit, which can certainly be classified as "social media". As is my standard for anything social media, I don’t participate much. But this isn’t about me. Most people have made their primary choice for social media, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, WordPress, or many others. Their chosen platform is where they document their life, at least the parts they want to share publicly. Basically, it’s where they leave their breadcrumbs to look back on later to see how their life was in a specific time period.
So these posts that people are making with their recent purchases, they’re nothing more than a status update or a tweet. And in Reddit, they can use subreddits as categories, to classify and group their different activities. It’s a different application of the platform, and one that probably differs from those that want Reddit to be a discussion forum. That difference leads to griping that the majority of posts are uninteresting to some people. It’s probably not a surprise to observe that these are younger people making these status posts, where it’s older Reddit users complaining about the lack of discussion.
But yeah, look at me. I could have put all this explanation in a reply on that thread, which would have spurred discussion and conversation. Instead, I make a post in my little private-public journal, where no one can respond to me and start any conversations. Am I any better? Well, I’d never suggest something like that.
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