1034: Share Buttons

Share Buttons

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Title text: The only post to achieve perfect balance between the four was a hilarious joke about Mark Zuckerberg getting caught using a pseudonym to sneak past the TSA.

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Explanation

This comic is a commentary on what sort of articles would have attracted the most attention on different social networking services at the time of the publication of this comic, through share buttons showing the amount of interactions on the website they were shared to. This practice became outdated, in favor of using a single share button, without a share counter. From left to right the share buttons are: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the now-defunct Google+.

• Twitter users were often stereotyped as trying to be comedians; hence, the article on stand-up comedy was shared most on Twitter.

• Conspiracy theory articles garnered attention on Reddit, especially if they were against the Christian Right and supported Wikipedia, as at the time, the atheist community on Reddit was very prominent.

• "Boycott Facebook" articles were ironically popular on Facebook. Google+, being semantically akin to Facebook, also had a significant anti-Facebook community. One of the punchlines is that Google+ wasn't being used often, before being closed down in 2019.

• The last article got almost no shares at all — not many would want to admit they are reading an article about a RealDoll, a type of sex doll. (Also mentioned in Game AIs and Flying Cars.) A custom ROM is an aftermarket distribution of the Android operating system and are often targeted toward enthusiasts. This community existed primarily on Google+ (as Google is the main developer of Android), and was one of the few active communities on that social network. As Android is an operating system primarily aimed at smartphones and tablet computers, installing it on a RealDoll, whilst possible due to Android's open source nature, would be a very niche activity, and the low number of shares indicates that it only interested a small portion of the already-small (relative to other social networks) Google+ community.

The title text humorously combines appealing subjects for all four networks:

• a hilarious joke – Twitter, same as above.
• about Mark Zuckerberg – founder of Facebook.
• using a pseudonym – referencing a controversy about real names on Google+.
• to sneak past the TSA – Reddit, a conspiracy theory as above.

Transcript

[A series of article titles with four share buttons underneath each: Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Google+]

Breaking Into Stand-up Comedy

FB: 3, Twitter: 1,781, Reddit: 2, G+: 0

How the Christian Right Threatens Wikipedia

FB: 1, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 2,241, G+: 3

Boycott Facebook Today!

FB: 248k, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 0, G+: 74

DIY: Installing a Custom ROM on a Realdoll

FB: 0, Twitter: 0, Reddit: 0, G+: 2

[Caption Below the comic]

Sometimes the most interesting part of an article is the share button vote breakdown

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Discussion

What, Wikipedia users and Facebook users don't overlap? I beg to differ. Davidy²²[talk] 09:01, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Where do you read that they don't overlap? If you mean the Reddit thing; to me it seems that it says that Reddit users like Wikipedia, and that Reddit users don't overlap with Facebook users. –St.nerol (talk) 23:41, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the joke is also that nobody actually uses Google Plus. 108.162.238.117 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Isn't there a joke on the FB boycott about... Well, boycotting it to get a buncha likes? 141.101.99.52 11:03, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

This comic also highlights that all social networks are very similar in terms of provided functionality. Indeed, when someone asked me what is the difference between facebook and twitter i had a very hard time explaining the "fundamental differences" between the two platforms. The truth is that people who use those social networks are actually shaping them according to their interests and their sterotyped beliefs. This point is brilliantly conveyed in this comic stripe 141.101.105.121 07:31, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Why is the "Custom ROM" limited to the Android OS? 162.158.89.9 07:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Update for historical context

This article needs to be rewritten to be more timely, referencing things like Google+, Twitter, and the "large and loud atheist community on Reddit" in the past tense. Share buttons like this are also not seen very often anymore, particularly with share counters like this. This should be rewritten to provide some historical context for these buttons, as it may be confusing to younger readers. TV4Fun (talk) 18:53, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
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