Final papers are coming up, and in combing through a variety of sources related to social media and librarians, I stumbled upon an interesting article about a Facebook group for health librarians.  Having seen an issue with how health information is shared, and specifically with the prevalence of anecdotal “science” and the lack of well-supported literature, the author of this paper started a Facebook group in which medical librarians could share sources and discuss their implications.  The groups is called “Biome Reconstitution”, and with 741 members and daily postings, it seems to be the success story/mascot that LIBR 559 and other social media touting librarians have been looking for.  Unlike a general librarian’s Facebook group, in which members can post 85 only-slightly different pictures of their cat every hour, this group is designed to be “structured on certain professional standards of high information quality, have guidelines around group con- duct, and be respectful of copyright” (Beales, 2016, p. 16).

With a great deal of both library professionals and students rejecting the affordances of Facebook for professional-related endeavors, I found the author’s justification for choosing Facebook as the arena for this group to be of particular interest.  The author lists three reasons in her paper:

“1. [Facebook] was the social media platform of choice for the helminthic therapy discussion community [the previous group that led to the construction of Biome Reconstitution].

2. [Facebook] archives group content in a keyword searchable format from the Internet.

3.  The author already had some familiarity with group management [on Facebook]”.

(Beales, 2016, p. 16)

Although the second reason is based on an affordance that Facebook offers, the first and third reasons contribute to what I believe is the most potent argument in favor of using Facebook as a professional tool:  people are already using Facebook in their personal time, and they (at least sort of) know how to use it.

After reading the article I got in touch with the author and, with her permission (it’s a closed group) am now a member of the group.  And, to be completely honest, it’s super dooper awesome.

Just looking at what has been posted in the past month, there are memes, one member’s picture of his award-winning book being advertised in Time Square, and a plethora of health-related articles accompanied with criticisms, discussions of findings, and anecdotes related to the articles’ content.

When I look at my Facebook feed, it’s scattered with cooking videos, pseudo-political memes, pictures of cute animals, and a weirdly large amount of watch advertisements (the Internet is *watching* me).  And not that there’s anything wrong with this, it’s actually one of the reasons I think Facebook is popular — my feed is a reflection of my friendgroup’s extremely wide variety of life experiences and interests condensed into a single forum.  But, and I think other librarians/future librarians might agree with this, I didn’t go into librarianship because it’s the sexiest career or because I’m going to make enough money by 40 to retire, I chose library school because I’m generally interested in the huge amount of topics it can cover.  I think that having a Facebook group in which members can only post about things that spark interest in a professional field is a great way to turn social media time-wasting into something a bit more engaging and productive.  Just a thought.

Beales, D. L. (2016). Citizen science on social media: One medical librarian’s experience of launching and maintaining a moderated facebook citizen science discussion group (www.facebook.com/groups/BiomeReconstitution). Journal of Hospital Librarianship, 16(1), 14. doi:10.1080/15323269.2016.1118267

The name “cnik” worked perfectly as a graffiti name.  When a few friends and I started really getting into graffiti in the early 2000s, it was common to see new writers with wack names — smoke1 — reelkilla — crA-Z-8 — leaving sloppy hand-styles around town with (almost certainly) stolen paint.

We were lucky.  One of my closest friends, who remains a close friend today, had a wayward desire when it came to boys, and in the 9th grade dated a man who was 10 years our senior.  Looking back on it now, the age gap between 14 and 24 is creepy to say the least, and probably illegal.  But at the time we were more than supportive of their relationship.  The guy was “Answer”, a graffiti legend in our podunk city, who had connections with some heavy graffiti crews all across Canada.

When you think of a grown man hanging out with middle school kids, you probably think of a skinny dude with a duster mustache, a beat up trans-am, and cheeto-stained fingers.  Answer wasn’t like that at all.  Tall, muscular, well-dressed in a hip-hop style.  But the thing that really stuck out was how genuinely friendly he was.  The first time I met him he came with a sketchbook and a pile of markers, and straight dropped graffiti-science on me.

“When you pick a name, it’s gotta have multiple spellings.  Homophones, I think that’s called.  You only get one name for your whole time in this game.  To switch up is like pressing a restart button, and you’ll lose a lot of respect from other writers.  So the name you choose is real important, and at some point you’re gonna get bored with those same letters, so it’s best to stay prepped for that.

“Now once you got your name, that’s when things get real.  Every good writer wants to pretend like they were throwing up the hottest stuff straight out the gate, but that’s all lies.  Everybody starts off a toy.  A toy — that’s what you are now.  You don’t have a style of your own.  You’re being played with by other writers’ styles that you’re stealing and trying to pass off as your own.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s where we all start.  Writers are gonna hate on you, cross out your stuff, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.  All you have to remember is keep writing.  New designs, new letter styles, new, new, new, new, new!  Never create the same thing twice.  That shows you’re getting an ego and your style’s getting stale.  If you do something you hate, throw it out and never do it again.  If you do something you love, throw it out and never do it again.  It’s all about the newness, and there’s nobody to regulate that except you.”

***

This was all happening before social media was a thing.  I think MySpace had just come out, but it didn’t have much of an impact on anybody I knew.  But in the graffiti world, there were two incredible collaboration tools that completely sucked me in.

The first was called Vandal Squad.  Think of Microsoft Paint, adapted to the idiosyncrasies of a spray paint can, and applied to a virtual train yard with about 100 trains.  You would log in to the site, and could either watch the trains go by with the graffiti that other writers had made, or choose a train that you wanted to paint over.  Pretty quickly, crews formed, and would do collaborative pieces on a train, or sometimes multiple trains, from computers all over the world.  Writers actually gained a significant presence, and within a couple years there were well-known/famous writers doing work in the virtual yard.  Online wars also started, as there were a limited amount of trains, so every time a new piece was done, somebody’s piece was covered.

The second tool was called Playdo Graffiti.  The interface was a lot similar to the blank palette and tools offered by Microsoft Paint.   But there were 1000s of walls that worked like live chat rooms — you pick a wall, do your art, and other people can see your mark and do their own thing as well.  Much like chat rooms, as well as comment feeds on today’s social media sites, there was a lot of hate.  But the coolest part of Playdo were the art battles.  You could go into a wall, challenge someone to an art battle on a different wall, go to the agreed upon wall, split the screen in half, and may the best artist win.  (Playdo still exists, but only as a single-user wall.  Collaboration doesn’t last forever, I suppose.  Here’s the link http://graffiti.playdo.com)

***

I’m writing this with a recent class conversation in mind.  The question was asked, “Can Facebook be used as a professional collaborative/creation tool?”  The (almost) unanimous answer was no, it can’t be, and that tools like Google Docs and email are preferable.

Maybe I misunderstood the question.  Or maybe I’m just plain crazy.  But to consider Google Docs and email as arenas to inspire fun and creativity is beyond my mental reach.

To frame my response differently, it’s important to consider a common theme ingrained in social media and a professional setting — there’s not enough time or money to make it happen during the workday.  So does that mean no social media collaboration for professionals ever? Nahhhh.  Nobody likes a quitter.

Rewind to my conversation with Answer.  I wanted to do graffiti, to get better at graffiti, for no other reason than wanting to.  I like creating things.  I think people who create things are the driving force of society and social change.  When you look at a tenured professors publication list, how many of those thousands of hours spent writing were “paid” hours?

I’d like to think, unoptimistically, that there’s a good amount of librarians out there who want to create for creation’s sake.  That after a day’s work, they come home and want to make something — a research paper, a twitter bot, a website…  And wouldn’t it be cool if these librarians had a place, outside the reference desk, to share ideas and and collaborate with other likeminded librarian-creators?

It would need to be a place that everybody was already familiar with.  That made it easy to share files, pictures, music, videos, and other types of media.  That was simultaneously easy to for people to find, and easy to find people.  If only such a place existed…

There’s an issue in stand-up comedy with joke stealing.  Fair enough.  If your art and main source of income is joke writing, and someone comes along and poaches your work,  no es bueno.  Rogan vs. Mencia is a good example of why joke stealing is a bad idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdugSUFbzws

In Mencia’s case, the guy is an obvious hack and is intentionally stealing material as a weird sort of power trip.  He’s famous.  You aren’t.  He steals.  Whatchoo gon’ do?

But what happens with other, grayer cases?  What happens when two comics approach the same premise, and arrive at very similar punchlines organically without ever having heard each other’s work?  — “I mean, I didn’t have to pee 2 minutes ago, but now that my house is in sight it’s like trying to block the flow of a fire hose” — hardee har har.

This post isn’t in the least bit about stand up comedy, but the comparison works well with a concept that I think most people, at some point, have dealt with: having an idea that you believe is original, only to find out that somebody beat you to the punch.

This happened to me recently.

Like most grad students, after learning about something new and exciting, I get enthralled with rants and ravings that are partially informed and branded with the unique, only-I-could-ever-think-up slants of opinion because my point of view is so special and great (early academia can get delusional and gross, but it’s funny how real it feels at the time).

The rant flavor of this past week for me was open access science sources, and how, with my sophistication and worldly knowledge, can’t ever be achieved properly without a catalyst.  As I so confidently spelled it out to my friends, Netflix and iTunes are killing the TV/music scene with flying colors, but could never have done so without Napster.  Napster, the thieving company that stole everybody’s work and made it free to the world, evolved, through litigation, tears, and cheque books, to a user-base subscription service that gives you almost everything you want for a wonderful price.  Academic publishing, as I so boldly claimed, needs a Napster, to take the power from the glorified pimps known as publishers and give the process of truth making back to the masses.  It’s only a matter of time.

In my defense, I uttered these statements 2 weeks before I saw the article, but the process has been happening since 2011.  It’s called SciHub, and it’s the Napster of science publishing.

http://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-has-illegally-uploaded-millions-of-journal-articles-in-an-attempt-to-open-up-science

The only reason it was brought to light (to me) is that the woman who initiated the project is being sued by Elsavier.  But this badass lady isn’t taking anybody’s shit, and is coming out swinging with accusations that Elsavier’s business model is illegal.  Add the fact that she lives in Russia, and for reasons beyond my understanding, makes it very hard for Elsavier to collect finances if they win, she’s built herself a pretty sweet little castle.

This post rejects a cohesive topic, refuses to offer any insight other than I-told-you-so, and has almost nothing to do with social media.  However, I felt like writing so I did just that.

–Microphone drop —

Every Tuesday night after leaving my 559 social media class, I transit my way home with the same frustrated taste in my mouth. Social media – collaboration – super cool! But how in the hell can we get libraries to use these tools in creative, meaningful ways?

This past Tuesday, as I was standing on a crowded bus, defeated by frustrated mental block, I pulled out my phone and opened a game called Trivia Crack. It’s a trivia question game, in which players must achieve trophies in 6 different question categories before their opponent. The game has the option to operate through Facebook, so players can challenge people on their friend lists. As another option, you can choose a random opponent, and be faced with an Internet stranger located anywhere in the world. There is another feature called Question Factory. This feature allows players to submit, rate, and translate questions that are used in gameplay. There are also trophy prizes for player’s with a large amount of successful submissions.

It’s funny, but it took me about five minutes of playing to realize that an app like Trivia Crack is a great collaboration tool, and one that I think could be used in academic libraries.

Here’s the pitch:

UBC Libraries promote a student-wide trivia contest using Trivia Crack, and run the contest through their Facebook page. Students could sign up for the contest by friending the UBC Library and joining the trivia group. The contest would be a single elimination bracket tournament, with one round of games happening everyday until there’s a single winner. Give the winner a print card and some cookies as a prize. Boom.

      +       

Using a bracket tournament will mean that the UBC Library Facebook page will have to post updated brackets each day, which will encourage users to visit the page on a daily basis as well. During the days that the tournament is happening, the UBC Library could make an effort to post fairly frequently, with the aim to attract contest users to other aspects of the page.

The ultimate goal, I think of an academic library using social media would be to have its users engaging with one another, with the library, and with other libraries, with the profile page as an arena of facilitation. In this way, users could begin to play a role in the formation of the library’s physical and virtual environment.

The problem: Time! Money!

The solution: Students!

Each library at UBC has a budget to hire student assistants through Work Learn. Having worked as a student assistant for several years, I understand that there is a fair amount of time spent on trivial tasks, such as ensuring that book spines are flush with the edges of their shelves. If the library were to utilize Work Learn funding to hire a student to manage social media, this could really open the opportunity for a positive and meaningful impact on the library’s relationship with its users.

Problem # 2: Reluctance!

Solution # 2 :  Fight the Power! (non-violently)

In order for an idea like this to be applied, the Powers That Be would have to want it, and it seems like in most cases they don’t. However, there are many examples of libraries using social media in fantastic ways, and maybe with cases studies and a concrete plan presented by a charismatic voice, the times may start a-changin’.

I nominate Samuel L. Jackson to present.

2 years before Kim Kardashian’s Photoshopped ass “broke” the Internet’s IQ, I committed my own act of e-vandalism, on half-purpose.  It was the last semester of my undergrad, and I had been freshly introduced to and consumed by Reddit.  In my haze of undergraduate overconfidence, I was certain that with a bit of effort I could make a front-page (top-ranked) post, and made a significant wager with a friend that I would accomplish this by the end of the semester.  I had 3 months, no problem.

Within the first week of my quest, I learned 2 things:  a disporportionately large amount of Reddit users were convinced I was a homosexual; and if you submit enough shitty posts, your account will get frozen and you will be unable to post anything for an inconsistent period of time (I ended up with 5 separate Reddit accounts to compensate for this).  The following 2 months were bleak.  I tried memes, photos, questions, comments, videos, and anything else that I saw successfully break onto the front page.  None of said efforts were remotely successful.

Then one day, a post known as “the safe” was added to Reddit (see link below).  This post was an absolute beast, gaining almost 2.5 million hits and generating almost 6000 comments.  The really crazy thing about this post wasn’t so much it’s success, but that for the following 2 weeks people were creating hundreds of memes about the safe, and gaining front page recognition.  Obviously I had to jump on this bandwagon, and I was able to create my first somewhat successful post, gaining 1400 Karma points (a SLAIS equivalent of about 80% – the bare minimal standard of decent/good work). However, it didn’t make the front page, and I was 3 weeks away from my deadline.

In a mild state of desperation, I tried to step back from my posting-frenzy and really analyze what made a good post.  Why was the safe such a hit?  The answer I arrived at was that a really successful post consists of original content (as opposed to memes and other posts that have a template or ‘reused’ element) about a real-life event, that can create a dialogue for a wide audience to engage in.  With this realization, I was able to clearly identify my situation:

Goal: create an original post that users will engage with

Issue: nothing in my life is interesting

Solution: lie

Now I’m not trying to promote dishonesty.  I consider honesty as a crucial component to one’s character, and have put myself in some unpleasant situations because of an unwillingness to lie.  But the way I justified it in this context was that I didn’t actually know any of the people reading my posts, and the ones that did engage with me weren’t very kind.  And after 3 months of failed attempts, there was no chance I was actually going to create a successful post, right?

Super wrong.

Within an hour after posting, my post was on the front page (see link below).  8 hours later, I had over 1 million hits and over 3000 comments.  Over the next few days I was contacted by New York Daily News, Good Morning America, and Outside Magazine, all requesting interviews so they could write about my story.  Buzz60, an online news channel, even did a 60 second showcase on the post (see link below).

Needless to say, the friend I made the wager with was pissed.  He tried to guilt trip me and said that I should feel bad about being a dirty liar.  Initially, I didn’t feel bad at all, and subsequently felt bad about not feeling bad.  But in my mind it was pretty easy to justify.  How many times was I called terrible names and downvoted for the ‘honest’ posts that I made?  What obligation did I have to tell the truth to an anonymous and generally hateful group?  I did feel a bit ashamed because my only success came in the form of a lie.  But on the flip side of that, I dabbled with writing every so often, and this confirmed that my fiction skills were on point (half-kidding).

At this point in my life, I’m far enough removed from the situation to see it all as pretty funny, both in regards to the undeserved/overwhelming success of one post, and the hundreds of dogshit posts I made prior.  I don’t feel bad about the post’s lack of factual events.  I’m familiar enough with Reddit now to know that most of the posts contain at least some element of dishonesty, and that the majority of users understand this.

It might have seemed like this blog post was going delve into the philosophical implications of truth and Internet identities, and that I was going to divulge an ultimate lesson I learned from this experience.  I apologize if I lead you on.  The only thing I really learned is that lying equates to winning (am I kidding?).

the safe – http://imgur.com/a/A8vF2

my post – http://imgur.com/a/Mj7UU

buzz60 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-b7c49NGT8

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

This is my first experience with blogging so I’m interested into how it’ll turn out.

A bit about me.  I was an undergrad student for far too long (7 years, full time, including summers).  While you may squirm at the cost of such an endeavor, I should mention that my dad is a professor and I was able to coattail on free credits for the majority of that time.  After completing this marathon degree, and being 2 weeks out from beginning a master’s in speech pathology, I decided I needed a break from school and moved to Shanghai.  And no, I couldn’t read/write the language, nor did I know anybody there.

Shanghai is fucking crazy (in a good way). With 24 million people bustling around the first and only free trade zone in Mainland China, the rate of expansion in every sense is astounding.   In my minglings with Chinese nationals working in various fields, there was a type of question that kept popping up: “How would a Westerner do this?” Or, “How would a Westerner expect this?” The idea behind these questions is so basic, yet very profound in their implication. Because the Chinese language is structured in such a fundamentally different way than English and other Western languages, the structuring and formatting of information is just as foreign. As more and more organizations are gearing their focus towards the West, the need for the translation not just of language, but a translation of the structural bodies of information and how they can be located is growing as fast as the country.

Adding to this buzz is the country-wide blocking of almost every popular social media site (Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia…).  Although there is a small population of young people and foreigners who use VPN services to bypass the blockages, the majority of Chinese nationals rely on what is permitted.  The main social media app, WeChat, is a combination of Whatsapp and Facebook, with shadows of Twitter and Instagram lurking in the background.  Because WeChat, like everything in Mainland China, is heavily monitored by the government, the communication of ideas that the government wouldn’t approve of is relayed through the creative use of memes and emojis.  I’m not going to pretend that I understand all of this (or maybe even any of it), but I’m really interested in how the use of social media of Westerners differs from that of Chinese nationals.

After inhaling several tons of polluted air, and consuming hundreds of carcinogenic meals (Google “gutter oil”), I’m now back in the West as a student (just when I thought I was out…).  After I finish this degree I’m hoping to return to work in the animal soup known as China.