There are like, a lot of people on this planet. An insane amount, in fact. Probably too many really. Everyone knows an almost incomprehensibly small portion of the overall population of planet Earth. What social media does is to take that knowledge away and make everyone feel like they are a part of something larger than themselves. Tumblr, Tickld, and even Grindr try to foster a sense of community with their users, and the fact that the community is largely imagined (meaning that users will not be directly aware of the other users distinct and identifiable existence) only serves to enhance the seemingly limitless scope of the possibilities of the internet. Tumblr has millions of users, and those millions of users experience certain trends en masse and largely in unison. This is probably part of the reason why receiving information or pop culture artefacts before others has become such a notable part of the social experience now (derisively referred to as hipsterism), because self-identifying within internet communities is a dangerous prospect. Connecting yourself to such a large group of humans without knowing what those other people are like will likely cause people to relinquish their standing on certain websites that are no longer in vogue, like how no one is on Myspace anymore, or how LiveJournal is now based in Russia. Social media sites know that you need constant stimulation in order to keep returning, to keep mindlessly checking your page despite there being nothing new to look at. So they use the vast expanses of people on their networks to constantly update and tweak their sites in order to satiate the endless desire for more content. Do you remember that guy who sat kind of close to you in grade nine? Well he's on Facebook, and you should probably talk to him. If not him, there are millions of others desperate to receive something from the great unknown that is the internet, and social media has you thinking that you wanted this for yourself all along.
Bryan Hickman is a WhatCulture contributor residing in Vancouver, British Columbia. Bryan's passions include film, television, basketball, and writing about himself in the third person.
