
Asserting Your Social Status With Your Facebook Status  - peter123
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/08/facebook_status.html
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blhack
I'm sorry but this sort of thing is so unbelievably, blatantly obvious when it
happens that if you genuinely believe that somebody is "casually" saying these
things, you're a social buffoon.

One of my friends is notorious for this. She is currently traveling around in
Europe...every so often there will be something like

"laying on the beech in the south of france today! France Je t'aime!"

This sort of thing does not come across as even remotely casual, because it
_isn't_ casual. Why did she feel the need to tell everyone that she was in
"the south of france"? Why not just "on the beech"?

Because that sort of thing is abnormal for her. It isn't something that she
normally does. She's bragging, and everybody knows it.

Now, I don't mean to pick on my friend (who may actually be fictional), but I
just want the people that do this sort of thing to know that it is very, very
transparent. You're making yourself look like a fool, and informing the world
that the very things you are trying to purport as normal for you are, in fact,
novel. That is why you're mentioning them.

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tjr
I would think that posts regarding atypical activity would be the most
interesting of posts. If a friend spends 90% of her time chained to a desk in
a boring job, then I'd be much more intrigued to read about her trip to
another country than to read about yet another day at the office.

~~~
blhack
You're right...posts about this _are_ more interesting. The annoying bit is
her trying to play it off like this is a normal activity...

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po
<http://tweetingtoohard.com/top>

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sp332
The commentary, of course, is much more worth reading than the status updates
themselves. Interesting to see how old-fashioned conversational techniques
make the transition to social microblogging.

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th0ma5
I see this going in stages much like blogging itself, where you are trying to
prove to yourself something really initially, then at some point you realize
that, but you keep going with it. Eventually you gather too many friends to
make sense of what is relevant, and you lose complete context of what you
should or shouldn't put in there, and then you repeat all of this, or
sometimes you just wind up either trolling or spamming with your status. Just
my 2 cents!

