What is my Facebook feed about?
Sometimes I look at social media a bunch, but it would be hard for me to tell you what the actual content is, I suppose because whenever I’m looking at it, I’m focused on each object thing level in turn, not the big picture. So sometimes I’m curious what it is I read about there. Here is the answer for Facebook, in 2019—according to a list I found that appears to be a survey of such—and again now. Plausibly not at a useful level of abstraction, but I have a bit of a migraine and no more energy for this project.
November 11 2019
Question about other people’s word usage
Question about other people’s inferences from word usage
Illustrated sex joke
Encouragement and instructions for opening up communication with attractive strangers in public places
Cute kid quote
Historic anti women’s suffrage leaflet
Cute kid quote and question about word usage
Recommendation and anecdote for Roam
Humorous anecdotal request for computer security problems
Joke I don’t get about Jesus with lots of emoticons
Sokal affair
Advice on surviving bush fires
Feminist writer screenshots and describes random online abuse from man
Sharing of personal health data
Science says a thing about dinosaurs and space
Tax policy trolling
Saudi spies at twitter news
Sexual/biological facts
Anecdote about medical system
Ethics in-joke
Current reading list
Travel photos
Anecdote about australian bush fires with tenderness
Long letter about policy goings on within medical system
Request for acronym unknown to me
Funny law
Science about biology, cryonics
Question about word usage
Politics opinion on events
Futuristic anime style politics cartoon
Notable patterns:
Questions about word usage: 4
Kid related: 2
May 15, 2024
(Before checking, my sense is that the rate of posts about children and getting married is way up.)
AI company politics commentary
Job and city change
Invitation to help make game
Description of experience of making music
Book launch, project launch, new house
Cryptic fertility life update
Social commentary on language, gender and wokeness
Old photo of two famous men
Old photo of author winning an award
Event ad
Death of father
Photo of OP kissing
New job
Update on losing job
Wedding planning views
Book launch
Social commentary around political ideologies
Death of dog
Questioning claim about changes in breathing rate over history
Take on home buying
AI lab politics
Photo of partner on trip
Photo of self at work
Own photo of bird
Commentary on culture of judgment and author’s parents’ behavior
Remembering child relative who died
General self-help style commentary on human behavior
Photo of dogs
Mothers’ day and Aurora photos
Invitation to help make game
Some notable patterns:
Kid related: 0-3 (maybe down from 2)
Marriage related: 1
—> I’m pretty wrong about the density of children and marriage related posts
Job/book updates: 5 (up from 0)
Smaller projects: 5 (up from 2-4)
—> Actually a lot of project related posts
Humor: ~0 (down from at least 5)
Word usage: 1 (down from at least 4)
—> Some classic sources of entertainment are way down (or we see random noise)