Blog Post #4

Since the whole world is spending most of their time inside right now and practicing social distancing (well, many of us–and many more each day, I hope), I think a lot of us are very glued to social media right now. I know I am. It makes me feel less alone in a time when my only company is my parents, my brother and my friend who lives nearby with whom I take walks while standing several feet apart. This may mostly be amongst my social media circle of college-age or recently graduated young adults (and by extension, likely many if not most high-schoolers), but I’m noticing an overwhelming trend of people consuming the same media and making posts and memes about it. This excellent example of social influence in an antisocial moment is most easily observable with Tiger King, the Netflix documentary series that has absolutely blown up in the past two weeks, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a new video game for the Nintendo Switch which (crucially) allows players to visit each other’s “islands” and play together. The former depicts such outrageous personalities and events that its contents are absurdly easy to make references and jokes to and about, and that has made it fodder for memes. I saw a number of memes about Tiger King on Instagram comedy accounts which I follow–some of which have as many as tens of millions of followers–which I think easily resulted in people taking the heuristic route and assuming the show was worth watching because of the sheer volume of free advertising it achieved through these posts (I think people who took this route are correct–it’s a fantastic show, if not a surprisingly depressing one). I have no doubt that other students mentioned it in their blog posts this week. The latter, in the case of many (including myself) has, interestingly, been a form of conformity that we have been willing to pay $60 (the price of the game) for. So many of my friends have told their own friends to get the game because there are inherent advantages to visiting others’ islands. Each island, for example, only contains one of the six fruits available in the game, and the game motivates you to collect all six. Islands in different geographical locations give players access to different species of fish and insects by virtue of existing in different biomes. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s simply the “cool” thing to do–it’s a way to interact with your friends in a game that focuses on the social rather than on the action (i.e. a shooter or puzzle game). All of this goes to show that social influence is not only happening in this time of social distancing, but is more or less dictating many of the activities we are engaging in while remaining in our homes.