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

  1. Question about other people’s word usage
  2. Question about other people’s inferences from word usage
  3. Illustrated sex joke
  4. Encouragement and instructions for opening up communication with attractive strangers in public places
  5. Cute kid quote
  6. Historic anti women’s suffrage leaflet
  7. Cute kid quote and question about word usage
  8. Recommendation and anecdote for Roam
  9. Humorous anecdotal request for computer security problems
  10. Joke I don’t get about Jesus with lots of emoticons
  11. Sokal affair
  12. Advice on surviving bushfires
  13. Feminist writer screenshots and describes random online abuse from man
  14. Sharing of personal health data
  15. Science says a thing about dinosaurs and space
  16. Tax policy trolling
  17. Saudi spies at twitter news
  18. Sexual/biological facts
  19. Anecdote about medical system
  20. Ethics injoke
  21. Current reading list
  22. Travel photos
  23. Anecdote about australian bushfires with tenderness
  24. Long letter about policy goings on within medical system
  25. Request for acronym unknown to me
  26. Funny law
  27. Science about biology, cryonics
  28. Question about word usage
  29. Politics opinion on events
  30. 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.)

  1. AI company politics commentary
  2. Job and city change
  3. Invitation to help make game
  4. Description of experience of making music
  5. Book launch, project launch, new house
  6. Cryptic fertility life update
  7. Social commentary on language, gender and wokeness
  8. Old photo of two famous men
  9. Old photo of author winning an award
  10. Event ad
  11. Death of father
  12. Photo of OP kissing
  13. New job
  14. Update on losing job
  15. Wedding planning views
  16. Book launch
  17. Social commentary around political ideologies
  18. Death of dog
  19. Questioning claim about changes in breathing rate over history
  20. Take on home buying
  21. AI lab politics
  22. Photo of partner on trip
  23. Photo of self at work
  24. Own photo of bird
  25. Commentary on culture of judgment and author’s parents’ behavior
  26. Remembering child relative who died
  27. General self-help style commentary on human behavior
  28. Photo of dogs
  29. Mothers’ day and Aurora photos
  30. 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)