A Bit More Detail

The "25 Things" meme that has been propagating throughout Facebook and the world, and has been receiving its fair share of comment. Salon's Robert Lanham confessed how, after finding "25 Things" inane, on closer examination he found many: funny, touching, insightful, while the title of the article of Time's Claire Suddath ("25 Things I Didn't Want to Know About You") pretty much says it all. More neutrally, Amy Harmon at the New York Times blog The Lede touched on the difficulties surrounding this meme.

Some Facebook critics condemn the activity--or even commenting on it--as an exercise in narcissism. Others say the Facebook-fueled disclosures draw far-flung friends closer than they ever would be otherwise and, sometimes, make for a good laugh.

It does seem to beat sending each other pretend cocktails (another preoccupation of Facebook’s 150 million users). But most everyone agrees it is taking up an inordinate amount of time. "People,’’ said Dr. Fogg, "are thinking very carefully about their lists."

The more popular your Facebook persona, the logic goes, the more you will be able to get your Facebook friends to read your blog or buy your book or support your cause. But crafting one is a delicate process, especially condensed in list-form.

How to exalt your achievements while appearing humble? How to convey your essential originality while coming off as reassuringly familiar? How to illuminate without oversharing?

Harmon then goes on to kindly provide a template for people who'd like to take part in "25 Things" but aren't quite sure how to be original.

One particularly insightful observation came from Joe. My. God, who noted that this sort of meme was quite common in the blogosphere years ago--it might have been a list of 100 things, but blogs clearly have the drop on Facebook. Back before this blog became what it was, back when it was much more a journal than a blog, I myself was an enthusiastic participant in these memes, back in 2004, 2003, 2002 even. So was everyone else I knew on Livejournal.

Wow. I'm a first adopter. That makes me feel special.

I first heard about the death of Princess Diana late at night, very early on the morning of the 1st of September. I was insomniac, wiorried about my first day as a first-year student at the University of Prince Edward Island, and flipping through the television channels. I got to the block of French channels and one of them--TV5?--was showing images of a car crash in Paris, something about ... I couldn't concentrate enough to listen, and I didn't understand why international news channels werre covering a car crash in Paris, and so I turned off the television and finally went to sleep.

Via several people on my friends list.

Explanation and other locations

It's more properly, as nhw notes, "how many people's friends lists are you on," but there one goes.

( Well? )