Social Media Social Experiment

Recently I made a couple (3 to be exact) of posts to my Facebook account with the goal to get my friends and family to buy a book.

(First post on Facebook)

The book I chose to aid in my baiting game was Haruki Murakami's, "Kafka on the Shore". This book is featured on the homepage of this website, as it is truly one of my favorite books. So I thought, why not share my love of Mr. Murakami's work, by advertising one of his books for him . . . for free.

My methods were simple. Prey on people's FOMO. I'm sure most of you know what FOMO is but, for those who are unaware, FOMO is the "fear of missing out." I believe this a similar phenomena to the "bandwagon" technique. My goal was to persuade people to click the link to the book by making them feel a sense of urgency, like they were missing out on something life changing.

(Second post on Facebook)

Another technique I used was being as vague as possible in order to build my audiences curiosity. Not knowing the full story elicits a sense of anxiety in us humans. We naturally want to know what's happening and why it's happening. We're curious beings, we can't help it! We also don't like feeling like we aren't privy to something others are. It's a similar experience to FOMO, but (in my opinion) a little more rugged and complex.

The last technique I tried to use was to relate to my audience. We are all experiencing such a unique moment in history. Everyone in the entire world is trying to find ways to cope with their newfound boredom, and for some, loneliness resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. People all over the world are trying to find new ways to lift their spirits and keep themselves entertained while the world is on lockdown. What better way to change things up than reading a book?

Ok, I know I called this a "social experiment' in the title for this post, but I have some bad news for you my friend. I didn't actually post these academic "advertisements" to my page. Well, at least not publicly. Maybe you caught on to the lock icon next to my name in my posts. You sly dog you.

Honestly, I chose to post privately because I was too embarrassed to do it publicly. I barely use Facebook as it is. I don't even have the app on my phone. I personally think it has quite a noxious atmosphere, and frankly, my mood is better when I don't use it.

With that said, it would be pretty bizarre to see that my first actual post in almost 3 years (aside from memes and amber alert shares) was going to be about why you should read a random book I like. How weird would that be? I cringe at the thought of what the one kid I used to sit next to in my tenth grade world history class would think about me posting such a random thing to my feed. I mean come on, I have to have some self respect.

In all seriousness, this assignment did make me very aware of my audience, and the invisible rules of the internet, particularly social media. It's strange that most of the people on my friend's list have fallen into obscurity in my life, but I still want to maintain a shiny image of who I was, who they remember me as today. I am still maintaining relationships I used to have with people, by not posting things outside of what my current online presence has previously presented in the past.

As a result, my Social experiment became more of an individual experiment. How many boundaries was I willing to cross in the realm of social media? Well it turns out, not that many, or any for that matter. To be honest, creating these posts made me feel a little sleazy. I didn't intend for them to come off as advertisements, but no matter what I tried, it always sounded like I was trying to sell something. I'm not sure if it's because of my poor persuasion skills, or if advertisements are more natural than we think.

I also found it challenging to come off as genuine when I was confined by a character limit. Yes, Facebook does have a pretty generous character limit, however, how may people are going to stop scrolling on their feed long enough to read my 5 paragraph essay on why they should pick up a book by Murakami? My guess is my post would have been completely lost in a sea of memes and self congratulatory posts.

All in all, this was an interesting exercise. I acted as I expected I would. What is it about social media that is so anxiety inducing? I know I'm not the only one who edits and revises what they want to present to the world online. At the end of the day it isn't a big deal if someone thinks something we posted was weird. Heck, they may never even see it! But for some reason we are incapable of acting outside of what we know to be "safe" for social media.