Blog Post #4 - Lucca Maggiolo
One concept that we have learned and touched upon in class that really interests me is in regards to the Dunbar number. Before learning about it in class, I was not well versed on the concept. Although, I always questioned the idea of the amount of followers most post individuals have, and out of that number how many do they really know? This is highly due to the fact that in regards to my Instagram account, I do not know all of my followers. Or if I do know them, I would not necessarily call them all my close friends. We have learned that the Dunbar number is based on the concept of everyone obtaining a social network that ranges to about 150 people. However, within that number of people, there are subcategories with different amounts of people associated with the specific category.
I believe that when people question how relevant the Dunbar number is due to the rise of social media, I would still say that the number for the most part is still accurate to individuals. With social media, one part of the anxiety it brings is towards how many followers you have which will then lead to more likes and shares. In my own opinion with my Instagram, I would say that once I get past 150 likes, most of the followers start to become people that I do not truly know. Or if I scroll through my followers, I start to notice that there are many accounts that I also do not know or have some type of connection with. With this being said, due to the naturalized "the more is better" perception with social media followers, likes and shares, we then choose to surpass the 150 followers mark. It is an interesting realization once you take a moment to really look through your followers on your social media accounts and question if you actually do know most of your followers.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a really good job of diving into Dunbar's number concept.I like how to talked about the idea of "the more the better", I think in our world today people look at how many likes, followers, and such that someones has before having an opinion or validating them in some sort of way. The idea that someone needs more followers and likes to be excepted into society on social media platforms is crazy to me. I think that Dunbar's number of 150 is still quite a lot and even the number of having 50 close friends is pushing it. Like you said it's crazy to think of how many people we follow on social media and how many of them we truly know. Great Post.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your blog post as I too find myself wondering about the actual number of users these people know in terms of the people they follow on social media. Just like you, I know for a fact I do not know all my following and followers on social media and as a result a high percentage of them do not fit into Dunbar’s number. Although people believe that Dunbar’s number isn’t very relevant anymore due to aspects like social media, I still believe that there is still some truth to his concept. Like you said, social media drives this anxiety that “the more is better” so people really aim to gain as many followers and following as possible, regardless of relationship/friendship status. I am so confident that if we sat down and determined how many of our followers and following are considered to fit in to the categories in Dunbar’s number, it would be a lot closer to 150 people then one might think.
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and you brought up an interesting idea about how an individual may have a lot of followers, but not know them personally. With Dunbar’s number, he discusses that individuals usually have a limit in their social groups of one hundred and fifty people. This is usually not as relevant as it was before due to the advent of social media. People will often add anyone with a mutual following or who have met a limited amountof times, which can cause a lot of anxiety for the person; they are scared to be themselves on social media and cannot post what they want due to the anxiety of being judged by others they do not necessarily know. As people are more comfortable with sharing their lives with their close and good friends, they will create “fake” or “spam” accounts, such as a Finsta to post anything they want on there to a smaller group of people. Many of my friends, including myself, have spam accounts where we will show more unfiltered versions of our lives to people we know. We often find ourselves in that situation where we only want to show content that is picture-perfect to a larger following base as opposed to a small group of people. With that being said, do you think that individuals should only add people they actually know on social media? Why?
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post and reading about how you applied what was learned in class about Dunbar’s number to how you use social media. I as well have followers on Instagram and other social media platforms that I do not consider my friends but rather just followers. Growing up with social media, followers and numbers were such a huge part of gaining “confidence” in a sense. As I got older, I realized followers were just a number, I did not care to have a huge following if they were not someone, I considered a friend. I do not think Dunbar’s number is as relevant anymore however his concept does leave you thinking about how followers are a number and you don’t really know them, which leads to our friends list consisting of maybe 150 people maximum.