I hadn’t come across this phrase until today, however it was coined (as I understand it) late last year when Facebook chose to ‘push’ their “Year in Review” feature to users by choosing a picture to illustrate the year and surrounding it with (generally) happy and joyous borders and the words “its been a great year”. Now – it doesn’t take much intelligence to realise that while – yes – most years are great in some respect – for some people the year will only hold bad memories whilst, for most, there will have been some low spots in an otherwise good year.
Imagine, if you will “Its been a great year” accompanied by a picture of your house going up in flames, of a picture of a deceased relative. Not what you want to see on your newsfeed – is it? Problem is – A picture of your wrecked car after an accident is (inevitably) going to attract much more interest than “yet another selfie” will do. So – when you look back at the pictures that made the major impact (pun intended) then the crashed car will be high on the list.
It is not my purpose to talk about the inadequacies of the Facebook algorithm. Instead I want to examine the underlying issues – in particular the fact that society seems to have embraced “social media” with an alacrity that had extinguished prudence. There isn’t a day goes by without me seeing behaviour online that strikes me as “inadvisable” – there are a number of weaker and stronger words I could have used, but inadvisable seemed a good compromise.
The sort of thing that I am talking about ranges from the inane – saying something that it is clear you are going to regret putting in the public domain – through the ill-advised – where you say something that seems, on the surface, to be reasonable – but which carries all the wrong messages – to the downright disturbing – which makes you think – WHY – just WHY did you say that!!!
Its not helped that the “show of support” for so long on Facebook has been the “like” button (soon to be given some nuances) which results in “like” being the only easy response to everything from “we just got engaged” to “my pet dog died today”. Whilst in the latter case the number of likes might well indicate the size of the sympathy pool that is around you it also – by another measure – shows how “good” the event is. Clearly not that appropriate for dying pet.
I have in the past been somewhat ‘surprised’ by a Facebook announcement of the birthday of someone I knew had died a few years earlier – guess Facebook and its algorithms have no way of knowing that – however it is just wrong on so many levels when someone posts “Happy Birthday” in response the announcement. I mean, how good a friend are you when you don’t know that they are dead. (perhaps this is a better measure of whether to keep someone as a friend – instead of having everyone “like” and respond to a status to show their “friendship” perhaps we should simply rank our friends in terms of “would I notice if they died”?
(yes I realise that this isn’t fool proof – there are instances where people I count as friends could pass away without me finding out – other than by their lack of posts…. and Facebook has even managed to obscure that a couple of times….)
Of course, my view of what I read on Facebook (and other social media, I am using Facebook as a shorthand) is heavily coloured by my own biases and worldview. I will most definitely acknowledge I may be reading some of them “in the wrong voice” – but – just a minute – so will everyone else – if there is a “bad” interpretation you can surely bet that many people will take that as the “truth”. So what sort of thing am I talking about here…. Well the following are some of my own particular bugbears:
Someone posts about a problem they are having and fifty (or whatever number) people respond with “thinking about you” or “hugs” or chin up” – I can’t help the feeling that most such comments are empty platitudes. Its easy to write that – its much harder to have “known” the person well enough to have reacted BEFORE the post on Facebook.
I am rarely taken by the “look what a clever child I have” type of post – two reasons really – the first is that in some cases this turns out to be rather an “own goal” as the achievement (whilst admirable in its own right) actually doesn’t rate that highly – the second is that there are so many other people looking on and thinking “oh dear my child is not that good” – this is not an outlook that I would want to foster in anyone.
One that is difficult to get right is an announcement about an achievement of your own. There is nothing wrong, per se, in doing this – after all you deserve it to be known – however it must not be able to be construed as “I am better than you” – therefore it must be genuinely humble. Too often it is trumpeting the “special” reasons why this is an ‘outstanding’ achievement. As long as it is factual and realistic then this sort of thing is OK – as soon as it invites (spurious) comparison with others then it who be avoided.
Don’t get me wrong – I think that social media together with the www is a great thing – the ability to be “in touch” with so many people who would otherwise be out of reach is wonderful. There is, of course, a place for general “announcements” but – for the most part – we have been slow to learn how to “partition” our communication – perhaps its just me, but it seems like there are plenty of things said “in public” on Facebook that you would not stand in the town square and shout to everyone about. Perhaps that is a learning thing – perhaps its not understanding the size of the audience that you are reaching.
It seems to me that more should be done “in private” – not shouting it from the metaphorical rooftops – but by private message targeted at the ‘appropriate’ audience.
Thing is – the person who coined the phrase that triggered this blog had done nothing wrong – what had been shared originally was simply ‘misused’ by an algorithm that was unable to connect together several separate facts and realise that the “emotion” that it was attaching to the shared picture was wholly inappropriate. We are – believe it or not – surprisingly clever when it comes to realising that there are some things that would be better left unsaid (albeit some people revel in doing precisely the opposite). A dumb computer algorithm will never reach that heights – and, indeed, it is unlikely that the possibilities were ever considered before unleashing the algorithm on the vast store of “memories” that is held online.
I suspect that those who wrote the code would, if challenged on this point, simply say that they had never considered the possibility that the user community was not comprised solely of those who are happy, upbeat and having a good life. IT may seem like a good idea to “pick the image that has most likes, put a joyful upbeat border round it, and suggest it as a great memory of the year” – totally ignoring the fact that everyone will have a mix of good and bad memories – and for many people there will be images that they would rather are forgotten.