I was tempted to ban a girl from my Facebook page for sharing memes I didn't make without giving me credit for finding those memes in the first place.
How did it come to this?
Is this what the Internet has done to us?
Allow me to explain.
I run a Facebook page for my theater and we like to post funny stuff, because when you just post stuff about what your theater is doing, nobody cares, but sometimes, if you bury that useful information among memes and tweets and other things that go viral based on the Skynet, I mean Facebook, algorithm, maybe somebody might decide to stumble into a show you're doing one night.
But enough about the hell that is promoting your business on social media.
Let's talk about content.
Specifically who gets credit for posting what and what the rules are when it comes to crediting people in an era when there are no new ideas just new captions.
The girl in question--who I thought about banning--was going to my Facebook page, saving photos of funny tweets or other content, and then posting it on her page without giving my page credit for having found those tweets or whatever in the first place.
Now, I didn't ban her, because once I took a step back and actually went out into the sunshine to remind myself that I'm human and not a subsidiary character in The Matrix, I realized that it would be insane to take action against someone for doing exactly what I did.
But, I thought to myself, why doesn't she just share the thing she likes directly from my page? It would help my page and it would still appear on her page for her friends to see, right?
...Except I think we all know that's not why we share anything.
I mean, yes, we share things because we find them funny, but we also sort of think that if people see something funny on one of our platforms, they'll think...we're funny. Even though they know we're not the person who came up with the thing they're looking at, we sort of...get credit for it, don't we?
But that's only if there are as few steps as possible between the thing they're looking at and us.
Which means, if we share something that someone else posted and acknowledge the other person, then...that person is funny and we're just someone who recognizes that what they found was funny.
God, I have a headache.
Adding to all that is the fact that Facebook seems to buy anything that has too many hands attached to it, especially if some of those hands belong to a business, because they want businesses to promote what they post, so if you share something that my business page posted, you might as well set it to "Visible Only to Me" (an option I truly don't understand the purpose of) because nobody is going to see it.
Recently, a friend of mine got angry because he made a meme using a photo of some random guy and someone on Twitter posted the meme without crediting him and it went viral.
Now, I get it.
Technically, he came up with the idea for the meme, but...
What exactly did he lose by not being credited?
Before you stone me, I do believe giving credit is important. I'm a writer, but I also acknowledge that...nowhere in the grand scheme of memes or funny shit being shared on the Internet is money changing hands that I know of.
Also, my friend didn't take the original picture that was used in the meme and he didn't credit whoever the photographer was that took the photo and he obviously didn't get permission from the person in the photo to turn it into a meme, so aren't we just building on something that nobody can really lay claim to?
In other words, shouldn't we just accept that this is the Wild Wild West if the Wild Wild West decided to host the annual Purge?
I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, because I want to lose my last shred of faith in humanity, and anytime someone goes on viral on there who's never gone viral before, you see this sort of excitement over take them. This feeling of--
Oh my god!
The slot machine is going off!
How much did I win?
And then the dejection of realizing--
Nothing.
You win nothing ~ Willy Wonka
It used to be that if you went viral, you at least got a bunch of new followers, but now even if that isn't the case, as is evidenced by those same people who went viral pleading for the people liking and sharing their tweet to follow them or check out the other stuff they post or for the love of god just Venmo me something, there are 158k of you liking this, why aren't I being compensated for that???
It reminds me of how back in the early aughts if you went on a reality show and lost, your friends still thought that somehow, behind-the-scenes, somebody slipped you a million bucks.
Because we equate fame with wealth.
We expect that if we get attention, money should follow.
Those few-and-far-between who actually make a living off being funny or sexy or whatever online have inspired entire armies to think that one viral tweet is the same thing as a winning lottery ticket when really, you have to win the lottery twice a day while shirtless.
Truthfully, all of this would be moot if we were all just great at being clever all the time so that we never needed to worry about finding the cleverness of others and using it for our own branding, but here we are in the darkest timeline where Macgyver is on its fourth reboot and Mean Girls is a movie that became a musical that is becoming a movie again. As upset as I can understand getting when somebody shares a funny cat photo and gets more likes from it than I do, it also gives me hope that you're still better off actually doing something of worth like writing a book or making a movie if you want praise and attention than you are from combining two memes and putting "Friday, right?" underneath it.
While I never banned that girl, I did send her a message saying that I noticed she was sharing a lot of the content we post and could she share it directly from our page?
She apologized for not doing it that way and said it was just easier to share it her way (even though saving, sharing, and then re-posting photos takes way more time and energy than just hitting a button that exists solely for the purpose of...sharing things, but that's okay.
I can't really blame her for wanting the same thing I want when I post stuff--people to see it.
Social media pages aren't vision boards. They're us standing on a box, screaming into a megaphone, trying to get people to notice us, and when you're up on that box, you'll grab whatever's in reach that you think might get you some attention, and if you end up pulling it out of someone else's hand, well...
Yippee Ki Yay.
How did it come to this?
Is this what the Internet has done to us?
Allow me to explain.
I run a Facebook page for my theater and we like to post funny stuff, because when you just post stuff about what your theater is doing, nobody cares, but sometimes, if you bury that useful information among memes and tweets and other things that go viral based on the Skynet, I mean Facebook, algorithm, maybe somebody might decide to stumble into a show you're doing one night.
But enough about the hell that is promoting your business on social media.
Let's talk about content.
Specifically who gets credit for posting what and what the rules are when it comes to crediting people in an era when there are no new ideas just new captions.
The girl in question--who I thought about banning--was going to my Facebook page, saving photos of funny tweets or other content, and then posting it on her page without giving my page credit for having found those tweets or whatever in the first place.
Now, I didn't ban her, because once I took a step back and actually went out into the sunshine to remind myself that I'm human and not a subsidiary character in The Matrix, I realized that it would be insane to take action against someone for doing exactly what I did.
But, I thought to myself, why doesn't she just share the thing she likes directly from my page? It would help my page and it would still appear on her page for her friends to see, right?
...Except I think we all know that's not why we share anything.
I mean, yes, we share things because we find them funny, but we also sort of think that if people see something funny on one of our platforms, they'll think...we're funny. Even though they know we're not the person who came up with the thing they're looking at, we sort of...get credit for it, don't we?
But that's only if there are as few steps as possible between the thing they're looking at and us.
Which means, if we share something that someone else posted and acknowledge the other person, then...that person is funny and we're just someone who recognizes that what they found was funny.
God, I have a headache.
Adding to all that is the fact that Facebook seems to buy anything that has too many hands attached to it, especially if some of those hands belong to a business, because they want businesses to promote what they post, so if you share something that my business page posted, you might as well set it to "Visible Only to Me" (an option I truly don't understand the purpose of) because nobody is going to see it.
Recently, a friend of mine got angry because he made a meme using a photo of some random guy and someone on Twitter posted the meme without crediting him and it went viral.
Now, I get it.
Technically, he came up with the idea for the meme, but...
What exactly did he lose by not being credited?
Before you stone me, I do believe giving credit is important. I'm a writer, but I also acknowledge that...nowhere in the grand scheme of memes or funny shit being shared on the Internet is money changing hands that I know of.
Also, my friend didn't take the original picture that was used in the meme and he didn't credit whoever the photographer was that took the photo and he obviously didn't get permission from the person in the photo to turn it into a meme, so aren't we just building on something that nobody can really lay claim to?
In other words, shouldn't we just accept that this is the Wild Wild West if the Wild Wild West decided to host the annual Purge?
I've been spending more time on Twitter lately, because I want to lose my last shred of faith in humanity, and anytime someone goes on viral on there who's never gone viral before, you see this sort of excitement over take them. This feeling of--
Oh my god!
The slot machine is going off!
How much did I win?
And then the dejection of realizing--
Nothing.
You win nothing ~ Willy Wonka
It used to be that if you went viral, you at least got a bunch of new followers, but now even if that isn't the case, as is evidenced by those same people who went viral pleading for the people liking and sharing their tweet to follow them or check out the other stuff they post or for the love of god just Venmo me something, there are 158k of you liking this, why aren't I being compensated for that???
It reminds me of how back in the early aughts if you went on a reality show and lost, your friends still thought that somehow, behind-the-scenes, somebody slipped you a million bucks.
Because we equate fame with wealth.
We expect that if we get attention, money should follow.
Those few-and-far-between who actually make a living off being funny or sexy or whatever online have inspired entire armies to think that one viral tweet is the same thing as a winning lottery ticket when really, you have to win the lottery twice a day while shirtless.
Truthfully, all of this would be moot if we were all just great at being clever all the time so that we never needed to worry about finding the cleverness of others and using it for our own branding, but here we are in the darkest timeline where Macgyver is on its fourth reboot and Mean Girls is a movie that became a musical that is becoming a movie again. As upset as I can understand getting when somebody shares a funny cat photo and gets more likes from it than I do, it also gives me hope that you're still better off actually doing something of worth like writing a book or making a movie if you want praise and attention than you are from combining two memes and putting "Friday, right?" underneath it.
While I never banned that girl, I did send her a message saying that I noticed she was sharing a lot of the content we post and could she share it directly from our page?
She apologized for not doing it that way and said it was just easier to share it her way (even though saving, sharing, and then re-posting photos takes way more time and energy than just hitting a button that exists solely for the purpose of...sharing things, but that's okay.
I can't really blame her for wanting the same thing I want when I post stuff--people to see it.
Social media pages aren't vision boards. They're us standing on a box, screaming into a megaphone, trying to get people to notice us, and when you're up on that box, you'll grab whatever's in reach that you think might get you some attention, and if you end up pulling it out of someone else's hand, well...
Yippee Ki Yay.
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