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The Facebook Fishbowl

Today I'm thrilled to see so many people with red Facebook pictures demonstrating their belief in marriage equality.

Seeing all that red would normally make me start to believe that this is an indication of a changing tide.  In all actuality though, it might just mean that everyone I know is pretty awesome, but...let's face it, there are a lot of people I don't know.

Facebook sometimes creates the illusion of a trend or a paradigm shift that isn't really happening simply because it causes an entire group of people to believe that everybody they know reflects the thoughts and opinions of the overall public.

Okay, now I'm going to use a stupid example to prove this:

Everybody on my Facebook Newsfeed talks about Smash.  As far as I can tell, most of the people I'm friends with watch it, and yet, it's season premiere got incredibly low ratings and it's continued to do poorly this entire season.  Normally, this would surprise me, but if I break the numbers down, I start to become aware of the fact that most of the people I'm friends with fall into Smash's very small target audience.  I had the same experience when the second season of The X-Factor premiered.  My Newsfeed was clogged with statuses about Britney Spears being the new judge.  And what was the country-wide result?  Low ratings.

Luckily, these are pop culture examples, and marriage equality goes deeper than that.  There are actual polls to back up the fact that the majority of people in this country want to see same-sex marriage happen.  What worries me is that people might actually think of their Facebook world as being a microcosm of the real one.  Seeing change on your Newsfeed doesn't equal change in the real world.

For that, you need to get offline and take real world action.

Just something to think about.

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