Baked-In Sociality

Hugh MacLeod has an interesting thought piece on his site Gaping Void about why some blogs get more popular than others. He argues that blogs like BoingBoing are popular not just because of great content but also because of having “sociality” baked in. He says that BoingBoing’s content is fun to share – that the posts are social objects. MacLeod says:

We are primates. We are social creatures. We like to socialize. And we socialize around objects. Boing Boing cranks out “social objects” by the ton, that we can effortlessly pass along to our friends.

And that’s where the true value of Boing Boing lies. Will sending your friend, Bob a link to this cool post about Detroit photographers permanently change his life for the better? Probably not.

But giving you something that allows you and Bob to socialize with each other ["Cool post, Dude!!!"] digs deep into what really matters to us primates: Socializing i.e. Sharing ourselves with our fellow species.

Gaping Void