Though you may think social media is really all about interacting with other people and sharing your life experiences, it's not. Quantity trumps quality when it comes to social media.
Don't believe me? When you update your status on Facebook, do you constantly refresh in the hope that you see "Like" after "Like" roll in? Do you shed a tear when you notice you've lost a Twitter follower? Does the sight of that little, orange notification in Instagram showing how many people have "Liked" your photo bring a smile to your face? Social media is run by numbers, and we're all just pawns in their little game.
But what would happen if you took all those numbers away? Artist Benjamin Grosser examined just that in a new paper published Nov. 9 in the journal Computational Culture. Grosser found that metrics used in social media drive our appetite to receive more likes, comments and other interactions of that nature. Oh, that's why it's so hard to tear ourselves away from social media.
In 2012, Grosser published a browser plug-in called the Facebook Demetricator, which, as the name implies, removes all of the numbers from Facebook. That doesn't just mean the number of "Likes" on your posts and those little red numbers showing you how many notifications you have go away. You also won't see things like the number of upcoming events, how long ago a post was published or the number of mutual friends you might have with some rando on the social network. If you'd like to live a demetricated life, you can head over to Grosser's website to download the extension now.
