Bernie Michalik's posterous site

I like cats, but I am getting tired of looking at people's cat pictures on
Instagram (and likely other places). I am sure there are people who feel
the same way about my food photos. I know this but I still enjoy posting
food photos nonetheless. The same with people and their cats. I wondered:
why is this? Is it antisocial of me? I am not trying to antagonize people
with my food photos? What's the reasoning behind it?

One reason is that cats and food are social objects (an idea of Hugh
MacLeod of Gaping Void fame). When I share photos of my food (or you of
your cats or your street or your kids or anything else), you are creating
an object that can generate social interaction. You can "Like" my photo, or
comment on it in the app we both use, or we can meet later and talk about
it. The social object supports social exchange of ideas and views. They
facilitate conversation. Obviously we can converse without social objects,
but if you do, you will likely find yourself depending on them to get the
conversation going (e.g. talking about the weather, what the person is
wearing, who the person/people they are with, what they think of the social
meeting place they are in). Social objects help us to be sociable. That's
one of the reasons we like them and use them.

I think there is another reason people share cat pictures and other such
things. They want to represent emotional states. Social objects not only
give you a way of to generate social interaction: they also give you a way
of communicating an emotional state (or states). These states can be simple
and light ("This cat is ADORBS!") to something rich and complex ("This child
is the love of my life and every little thing s/he does is meaningful to
me"). But the social object contains an emotional state of some form, even
if it is one of coolness/boredom. Better still, we can not only represent
our emotional states, but we can get feedback of them too. For example, I
can post a photo of my son whom I love and I am proud of, and that
emotional state gets amplified when I get alot of feedback from people
telling me how great he is.

The next time you see someone's cat photo or food photo or any other photo,
ask yourself two questions:

1) what form of social interaction does the person expect as a result of
the social object
2) what emotional state is the person conveying with the social object,

It will help you better understand why the person shares what they do, and
you will know something (even if it is very small) about the person.

By the way, what is true for photos is also true for links shared, retweets
of information, and blog posts.

Thanks for reading this.