Hi, I’m curious how I would do in Elsewhere University. I’m a 23 year old saving money to go back to school, my plan is to major in Political Science with the goal of either becoming a politician or a civil rights lawyer. I’m currently studying for one CLEP exam at a time so that I can test out of as many credits as possible before enrolling; I will also be going to a community college first for any general education requirement that I can’t test out of. My local university offers a program that rewards credit based on prior experience, so I’m most likely at Elsewhere University because they offered a better deal. Then again, I’m also very drawn to ghost stories and the unknown; so it’s also possible the folk lore surrounding the school drew me in. I’m self-employed .Mainly I clean houses, but I also have a small babysitting business. I volunteer at an animal rescue and I do a lot community organizing/social activism work during my free time. I’m a volunteer lobbyist during my state’s legislative session . I’m an artist and my style usually gets described as creepy; I take this as compliment since I like spooky things. I’m progressive. Most people describe me as passionate. I make myself look extroverted because of my business and activism work , but I’m actually introverted. I use my study and painting time to recharge. Do I survive?
While trying to locate your cell phone charger, you find that your friend owns an exquisite silver dagger with your full true name engraved on the blade.
I think the real problem here is that big media corporations seem to believe that social media userbases are fungible, and persist in acting on this belief no matter how many times it’s demonstrated to be wrong.
There’s a specific pattern of events that plays out over and over (and over) again, and it looks something like this:
1. Social media platform becomes popular
2. Social media platform is purchased by big media corporation in order to gain access to it large user base
3. Big media corporation realises that social media platform’s demographics are not the demographics they want to sell things to.
4. Big media corporation institutes measures to drive away “undesirable” users, apparently in the honest belief that the outgoing users will automatically be replaced by an equal number of new, more demographically desirable users
5. This does not, in fact, occur
6. Social media platform crashes and burns
You’d think that, by the sheer law of averages, at least one person who’s capable of learning from experience would become involved in this whole process at some point.
That person has been fired
The media execs fail their math. Specifically, they fail the network theory.
They look at the numbers, like Tumblr’s where only 1% of the users make 99% of the explicit content, if I remember a recent study right. So, why don’t we lose that 1% and live happily ever after? – an exec says.
Because! The networks on social media are decentralized, and the 1% are the key nodes:
Those local nodes are load-bearing, like the cornerstones of a building. Remove them, and the network falls apart and dies.
Soundwave has that image on his wall, because he’s competent:
I can’t believe this post went from explaining the history of social media, to using math to explain it… to a link to a light bondage Transformers fic.
Just for fun, here’s the Tumblr Labs Reblog Graph of this post:
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