
Gym Selfies a Sign of Tough Times for the Economy - spking
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/gym-selfies-a-sign-of-tough-times-for-the-economy
======
kafkaesq
_The research suggests that since 2008, there has been "an empirically
observable rise in young men sharing images of their worked-out bodies on
social media platforms."_

Because social media was still relatively new -- and image sharing barely a
thing, back then?

 _He also interviewed a handful of young gym-going subjects and scoured the
use of fitness-related hashtags on popular social media site Instagram,
finding that a "large [proportion] of these are images of men displaying their
muscular bodies."_

That sounds really rigorous. Where can I get a job doing "research" like this?

~~~
danieltillett
This is actually pretty rigorous for the social sciences. When I was an
academic (I was in the School of Pharmacy) I used to see these "qualitative"
studies all the time by our students collaborating with the social scientists
in other departments. These studies all consisted of unstructured interviews
of a half dozen people with no clear hypothesis.

The first time I was asked to mark a thesis writing up one of these studies I
failed it. The other two markers both gave it an A. I was overruled and never
invited to mark a similar thesis again. I at least tried to stop this rot :(

------
valdiorn
> The reason, according to study author and University of East Anglia lecturer
> Jamie Hakim, is an erosion of "traditional routes to success and power"
> typically supplied through rewarding employment.

...or smartphones got cheaper, or going to the gym became more common, or
people just discovered instagram, or...

jumping to conclusions are we?

