Review Your Social Media Timeline to Improve Your Sense o...

In an experiment at Cornell, stressed college students randomly assigned to scroll through their own Facebook profiles for five minutes experienced boosts in self-affirmation compared to students who looked at a stranger’s Facebook profile. The researchers believe self-affirmation comes from reminiscing on past meaningful interactions — seeing photos they had been tagged in and comments their friends had left — as well as reflecting on one’s own past posts, where a person chooses how ...

 The Fakester Genocide and Revolution

When Friendster eliminated the “most popular” feature in May 2003, they also deleted both Burning Man and Ali G, each of whom had more than 10,000 friends. This was the start of a Whack-A-Mole–style purge of Fakesters, in which Fakesters and Friendster competed for dominance. Fakester farms were created and Fakester owners would duplicate their Fakesters for rein- sertion. In late June, a group of Fakesters gathered on the Friendster bul- letin board (and later in a Yahoo Group) to begi...