Facebook And Smartness Illusion

Coming back to Facebook, one idea crossed my mind after spending almost one week in front of this blue-and-white page, there are people who are successful at getting the attention of a large audience while others like you and me are spiders in the corners of Mark's platform. So I began to wonder what made those people more influential than others. I looked at some profiles and saw that their publications address what most of the young and teen like or meet their social needs. However, some of the statuses are just dull and lack of any interest. Still, those ho-hum topics get hundreds of likes. Having too many followers might make a person feel smarter, and they believe they are, and that is the illusion Facebook and other social networks sell to their clients. Peddlers of knowledge as they might consider themselves, they post or preach things that are well known for the majority of their followers, yet they get applause. This led me to think of the reason behind all this fuss over them and what makes people hit the Like button. 

The icons were either famous before coming to Facebook or became so thanks to their activities in the social network. The first ones are to exclude here since Facebook had nothing to do with their reputation.

What made your friends successful at getting a lot of people around is not related to their cleverness, and doesn’t apply that they are smarter. They didn’t dangle loot before their followers either. It is mainly related to the activities they are doing a savoir joining groups, bringing up discussions, making new “friends” (a lot) and posting hot news. We cannot deny the fact that some of them have skills like singing or imitating singers, writing or drawing etc... Some of them are followed because they have some political point of view that imbued their fans with enthusiasm, and those who follow them become fanatics and take their leader as a Che Guevara. 

Unwillingly, every person is hardwired to want to be followed. You have an innate desire to see your followers list becoming larger. This makes you feel you are in a higher position and an idealistic image of you is starting to form in your mind. And then, you begin to believe you are a charismatic person and a smart leader. People will look forward to meet you, hang out with you and spend time talking to you but this is not what makes you smarter. If you wish to have a lot of followers, be careful what you wish for, you will form a cult around you and then, if you post something, a follower might try to make the world a better place or convince his mates to kill themselves.

Facebook is an addiction and so is hitting the Like button. The followers hit it at the first time because the leader drew something interesting in his wall, but after that they hit the button without any reason (The drawing is on their hearts now). The first impression is glued to their minds, and that is one of the most dangerous biases your mind falls into. 

Finally, David McRaney in his book "You are not so smart" , that I highly recommend, said: " People who use the number of friends they have on Facebook as a metric of their social standing are fooling themselves. You can share videos of fainting goats with hundreds of acquaintances and thousands of followers, but you can trust a secret only with a handful of true friends."

Read it. And while doing so, you and I will carry on weaving our webs.