Well that got worse quickly
Dear SJ,
Not long after I wrote to you about DYOR, I came across this post on LinkedIn sharing a TikTok video by [handle] elieli0000. It was also talked about a little differently over on this LinkedIn post. Just to show you that it started making the rounds.
In the TikTok video, this elieli0000 shows a post of a woman talking about her boyfriend and his behavior, something something. She sees comments that skew toward supporting the woman.
When her boyfriend views the exact 👏 same 👏 post 👏, the comments he is shown skew toward criticizing and demeaning her (aka siding with the guy she’s talking about).
Now, I don’t care if I sound old here, but did you know the comments are ALSO curated as much as the content?
As someone who remembers life before social media, this is like finding out there’s a 10th circle of hell. You will have to be careful of comments when you’re D-ing YOR.
⭐ Key action: like any good researcher, you sometimes have to see if you can replicate a “thing” that other people say is happening. Let’s replicate and see what is going on with the comments on the posts we consume.
▶️ How to do it: pick one or two of the YouTube videos or other social media posts you paid attention to while doing your own research on starting a business (per the last post, linked again here).
Get a friend or family member to go look up the same exact post.
Review the comments you’re seeing versus the ones they’re seeing, side by side. (Or they can send you a screenshot.)
💭 Think about it: What do you notice? Are there any differences at all? What kind of “mix” of comments do you get — for example, what mix of gender, ages, topics, tone (in general terms that you can sense from the topic: maybe “supportive,” or “disagreeing,” or “aggressive,” or “peacekeeping”) do you see versus your friend or family member? How similar or different are the mixes?
If you feel like you want a challenge: let’s say you both saw the post and wanted to start a conversation face to face — how do you think it would go if you saw one set of comments about it, and your friend or family member saw another completely different set of comments? What do you notice about your own opinion forming as you consume the comments as part of consuming the post?
