Sunday nights supermoon
and combined eclipse occurred only five times in the 20th century. This created
quite a stir on social media. Every major social media platform had coverage of
the rare sighting. Snapchat featured a story for the event, Instagram had a sponsored
post for the event, and Facebook and Twitter’s top trending topic was the
supermoon. I thought it was very interesting to see an event like this go so
viral. We have rare occurrences happen in the sky all the time but many people don’t
bat an eye. I believe this comes as a direct result of where we are on social
media as a whole. If we did not have friends on social media would we still use
it? Absolutely not, and there would be no social element.
I believe in a
thing called fear of missing out. I think the supermoon was built up by news
channels that wanted an interesting story, which then generated conversations
about the event on social media sites. I believe people are so interconnected
with their followers that they do not want to miss out on something everyone
seems to care about. With that a picture or some sort of documentation becomes
a necessary part of the equation. We feel if we don’t document the event in
some way, that we missed out on something. Simply watching the eclipse is not
enough.
Everyone wants
to have a say on exciting topics. Simply posting a picture about the eclipse
and making a comment are all of the satisfaction people need. As long as they
feel the security that they didn’t miss out on something their community found
important. This will fuel the conversation for my next social media blog about
the nature of posting. As for the media coverage I am all for it. I am happy to
see people appreciating our amazing world we live in even if it is only because
they didn’t want to miss out.
Sam, I think you have touched on an interesting point. I agree with you that people tend not to want to be left out of an interesting conversation or event; but, I also think it depends on the person. Yes, I believe some people do things just because others are doing it, but how do we distinguish these people from those that actually enjoy stuff like this? I feel that as a people we tend to group everyone together, when in reality it's not always like that. Were you able to watch the supermoon? I was and it was really a beautiful site (although the clouds tried to ruin it). However, I chose not to post an image or even take a picture because in my opinion, the point is to just enjoy the event itself. Maybe that's the difference between those who want not to miss out and those just enjoying the event. Very interesting topic!
ReplyDeleteSam,
ReplyDeleteI think you're absolutely correct. I was one of the million who watched the moon, and I have to say it was not all it was hyped up to be. The way social media made it seem was that it was going to be this big ball of fire red in the sky, and unfortunately I didn't see that color. However I watched it for myself, not for the trend. Although I know many that did watch it for the trend. I still agree that social media causes FOMO. You hit the nail on the head.