Remember that social media experiment I did a few months back, in which I measured the “Diversity Quotient” of my social media feeds?
Well, this afternoon I went back to my original dataset, and this time counted up all the “memes” which were spread around for pure entertainment, and not just for supporting social, political, or moral values.
The biggest category of messages was general encouragement and motivation. But the second biggest category was humour involving cats and kittens. There were more than double the number of the third-highest group. And almost ten times more cat and kitten jokes than there were jokes about sex! I almost put the cats in a class by themselves. I’m not sure what explains this: perhaps it’s because the proportions of kitten’s faces are very close to the proportions of infant human faces. Or maybe it’s because I love cats, I love every kind of cat – sorry I’m getting emotional – and I just want to hug all of them but that’s crazy because you can’t hug every cat…
Nevermind. Here’s the tally.
Total “Inspirational”: 110.
General encouragement, motivation, morale-boosting = 53
included a scientific claim =3
reference to a historical figure = 9
reference to a pop culture celebrity = 6
statement about love, trust, and friendship =11
statement about friendship with animals = 3
birthday greetings = 2
promoting good behaviour = 9
grieving the death of a loved one = 1
statement endorsing some kind of nonconformity = 13
Total Humour: 225
Humour involving scientific or historical facts = 7
Humour involving coffee = 2
Humour involving roller derby players = 1
Humour involving cats or kittens = 39
Humour involving dogs or puppies = 5
Humour involving sex = 4
Affirmations of [one’s own] bad behaviour = 8
Criticism of [other people’s] stupidity or bad behaviour = 17
Criticism of pop culture = 4
Criticism of religion = 9
Humour / insults or put-downs = 4
Political satire = 1
Humour involving a pop culture reference: 44
Of which:
Humour involving actor / singer / pop celebrity = 4
Star wars = 10
Douglas Adams = 8
Star Trek = 4
Firefly = 3
Lord of the Rings = 3
Terry Pratchett = 1
HP Lovecraft = 2
Dr Who = 3
Avengers = 1
Calvin & Hobbes = 1
Harry Potter = 2
Probably a pop culture reference but I couldn’t identify it = 2