Ornoth

I don’t know if I’m typical or not—most people would say generally not—but the main reason I use Facebook is to keep up to date with my friends.

When I check into Facebook, I’m giving you my attention in hopes that you’ll tell me more about what you’re thinking, feeling, and doing. In short, I’m explicitly asking you to tell me more about yourself.

You’d think an invitation like that would be snapped up greedily. After all, everyone loves to talk about themselves, don’t they?

Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to happen that way. When I view my friends’ feed, most people are just reposting links to something they’ve read: some political cause or a quote from some celebrity or a news item or some found bit of humor. Or something even less interesting.

Impersonal links might be good enough for some people, but I hope you will agree that reposting links doesn’t fulfill Facebook’s real value: helping us learn about and stay genuinely connected with one another.

In order for that to happen, people need to actually talk about themselves. As a friend and someone who reads your feed, I am far more interested in you than any of the prefabricated content you link to. As a reader, I’m asking you to create original content, rather than be just another link-spewing news aggregator. Your content should feel more like an article in the Huffington Post or the New York Times than a bare list of links from Reddit or StumbleUpon. As a genuine person whom I have friended, you and your life are far more interesting to me than anything you could possibly link to.

That’s how I’ve tried to treat my readers. Sure, sometime I post links, but not often. I presume that you friended me because you are interested in me, so most of what I post is original content—check-ins, status updates, posts from my blog, photos and videos I’ve taken, my GPS tracklogs—that let you know what’s happening in my life.

So now we get to my actual challenge to you. It’s easy and fun, and might convince you to take my points to heart. Here’s what I want you to do:

Go to your Facebook wall and look at the last 30 entries you posted. Count how many of them are content that you created or which are primarily about yourself, as opposed to just links to something someone else created that you stumbled upon and forwarded. Figure out what percentage of your feed actually has to do directly with you. In my opinion, the more of you that appears in your feed, the better!

Of course, I won’t exempt myself. As of this writing, my last 30 posts contained 24 original items, and 6 links (4 of which I added some personal context to). That means over 80 percent of my feed consists of real Ornoth-related content, as opposed to low-value reposted links that none of you asked for.

Now try it yourself! Go look back at your wall and see where you stand. What’s your percentage? Then make a conscious effort to improve your signal-to-noise ratio. If you post more often about yourself, both you and your friends will derive more real value from Facebook. Always remember: there’s only one topic that both interests and really matters to all of your friends: YOU!

And if you think this is a message that needs spreading, I hope you will like or share.

Just thought I’d point out a few bits that have made me happy recently.

Angband: It’s the old Moria game, but somewhat updated.
Ares Tube: Take any YouTube video and copy it to your ipod.
jQuery: Excellent javascript framework.
Schtickers: Custom covers for your laptop.

I just ate here. You have to listen to the background music on their splash page to believe it. Click it and prepare for audio WTF, mate.

Some good article pointers. Cred to somervillian for the bike-related ones.

Married Bed Death and Sexual Play

Several good points here, like porn and BDSM having value, men not being depicted as sexual predators, and so forth.
 

Male Bisexuality

Interesting points, not just about sexuality as a continuum rather than two discrete opposites, but also how sexuality can vary, leading to a host of problems for people who cling tightly to the idea of sexuality as an “identity”.
 

The Most Energy Efficient Method of Transportation in the World

Especially good is the last set of data, where it’s shown that an automobile requires FIFTY TIMES more energy per mile travelled than a bike.
 

The Most Popular Method of Transportation in the World

And here’s another interesting tidbit: there are three and a half times as many bikes on the road as there are cars. So you’d better get used to ’em!

I find it surprising that a nation that reads so much can write so poorly. Some reasonably good advice for all you blograts can be found in this ALA article.