The Bastard Child of Social Media
I wrote a piece for The Punch that was uploaded today. The conversation that follows is more interesting than the actual article.
I wrote a piece for The Punch that was uploaded today. The conversation that follows is more interesting than the actual article.
Fritz Bachen is a Consumer Psychologist and Founding Partner at Naked Communications. Fritz can be seen, read or heard at; The Gruen Transfer, ABC Radio (Sunday nights), Adnews columnist, as well as The Australian, Cleo, Mumbrella, Shop Till You Drop and so on. He speaks at numerous conferences on marketing, ideas, contemporary culture, and consumer behaviour. Fritz has degress in clinical psychology and commerce (marketing). A registered psychologist and has worked in private practice, forensic settings, advertising (Saatchi & Saatchi) and marketing consultancy (Added Value). He was also state under 12 chess champion on WA, and has a board game called The Analyst selling well in the Benelux countries.
Comments
Ken
Oct 27th, 2009There is some fairly good research that shows that if you put people in a room they become more polarised in their beliefs. The internet is essentially a big room which allows anonymity, so people end up really polarised. I read an article on Obama's peace prize where all opinions I read were either Obama is a jerk and doesn't deserve anything or Obama is a great guy and surely deserves it. No attempt at rational argument.
I really can't see the point in commenting or reading comments on anything political. Who reads any large percentage of the hundreds of comments on say a NY Times opinion piece, so why bother making a comment, though they do highlight some comments. I assume it is simply a marketing exercise as it encourages certain people to connect.
mariusforplanner09
Oct 27th, 2009There is also research showing that people can only have a meaningful relationship to a limited number of people; around 150 (referred to in the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell).
This becomes obvious online where the most constructive and popular comments are made in smaller niche forums, as opposed to for example NY Times where there are too many participants to build and maintain relationships. The conversations become chaotic and we stop bothering.
A comment was made to Fritz's article suggesting that there exists a hierarchy of ethos among commentators, in which people you know are at the top and the anonymous idiots at the bottom of the food-chain.
I think anonymous comments are something we must accept as a compromise to the freedom offered online, and if we ignore them they'll soon be gone.
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