Your Personality is Shareable, Part One

These are black-footed kittens from the Philadelphia Zoo. I swear this is relevant.

Sharing is easy.

It’s so so so easy, in fact, that in order to annoy my Twitter followers, Facebook friends and whoever else deals in the dark arts of the internet, all I have to do is make one click.

In marketing, too, it’s important to make sure that your audience has to do as little as possible to distribute the intended message. That’s why Facebook has a “share” button. It’s why articles come with pre-written tweets.

And, because of this, it’s easier than ever to display your “personality” by sharing what you’ve read online.* Posting an article from the Upshot shows that, not only are you well-informed and interested in intellectual topics, you’re into media that’s only a teensy bit off the beaten track.

Congratulations, almost anyone ever. Your personality is now a listicle of news articles and contrived thinkpieces.

So, in an effort to only be a tiny bit different from my fellow Baby Yuppies, I tried to stop sharing articles for a week. I made a rule to include email sharing, since it's just a less public way of accomplishing what's described above.

I lasted(ish) two days.

MONDAY

• Read an article in The Guardian about hipsters, via the Quartz daily brief (here's where you should sign up). 
• I wasn’t even halfway through the story when I thought of two people I could send it to. Can’t recall one out of two of the people interviewed.
• There are almost no proven cures for a hangover, except one: a fried breakfast.** 
• I thought about sending this to a few people, including a friend I offered to bring greasy breakfast to on Sunday because of an intense hangover. I realized, one-third into the article, that I was bored of the subject matter. Ditched it.
• Eventually failed to stick to my rule when I sent photos from a Huffington Post article to a friend. 
• These are black-footed kittens (see above). I couldn’t not share.
• I discussed that vagina sculpture with three different people. 
• I figure this counts.

TUESDAY

• Emailed the New York Times profile of Sia (it had to do with Rihanna’s “Diamonds”, one of the greatest pop songs to come out in years) to a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. 
• I also did this before I remembered my rule, but it still counts.
• Did it again! I asked a new friend for their email so I could send them a Buzzfeed long form piece about Kanye and self-love as a political act (actually a really interesting article!). 
• I feel like this speaks less to my powers of self-control, or lack thereof, and more to how Kanye is the most shareable topic this decade. Next to Beyoncé and whatever comes out of Ann Coulter's mouth next.

And that was the end of that failed experiment. I think I’m going to try this again soon, since I failed to record how many articles I did read without sharing. I’m guessing that what you see here is only a quarter of what I read in a typical day.

Try it, though. Removing the idea of “shareability” from my mind helped me look at stories only for what they were, and not for who in my group of friends would appreciate this or that fun thing.

We’re always itching for a way to identify with another person (read: the reason for Buzzfeed’s behemoth success), so what happens when you remove that?

Reading and learning. Just for yourself.

- drops mic -

I also realize that, in writing this blog post, I've done everything I criticized earlier. Oops.

*A friend once told me that he shares articles he doesn’t even read. He’ll get the headline, the first two paragraphs (maybe) and post it online so that he looks smart. I laughed, because this behavior is horribly horribly common.

**I can't find this article anymore. I don't think I dreamed it.