Karma: What Goes Around Comes Around
Name an uncomfortable moment you experience each and every day, often more than once. A moment that regularly has you counting down the seconds until you can powerwalk away and never look back. Yes, I am talking about the infamous New York University Shanghai elevator experience. Never before have you been someone who finds it difficult to engage in social interaction, but suddenly you begin fumbling as you mutter “can press you two floor thank you.” Quite obviously, you intended to ask the person accompanying you in the elevator to press the button for the second floor, but most likely you are not even going to the second floor, you are probably already on the second floor. The awkwardness induced by an elevator is an unexplained phenomenon that rattles the minds of industry professionals everywhere, but it is something we unfortunately have to deal with more than we would like.
But, why does this happen? When you go to the mall and are in an elevator, why is it you fail to experience the same pang of uncomfortable emotion so customary of NYU Shanghai’s elevator? Well, you are in an elevator with people you have never met, and will probably never meet again. To your knowledge, you have absolutely no connection between the two of you. Considering the circumstance, there is little, if any motivation for you to form a connection. All of these factors result in a relatively pressure free elevator ride.
Contrastingly, let us imagine an elevator ride with your friend. Again, a relatively stress free situation has been placed in front of us. You talk just like you always do when it is the two of you, and if you are not talking, there is no pressure to maintain a steady and entertaining conversation. Friends are friends, despite your weirdness and apparent social awkwardness.
Then why is it at NYU Shanghai, the elevator becomes a challenging test of your abilities in social interaction? Being that most people you encounter in an elevator hold some sort of relationship with you, there is a sudden need to acknowledge that relationship. Whether it is a friend’s friend, someone who lives on your floor, or even that boy you ran into last night when picking up your Sherpas order, there is some part of you that needs to acknowledge that ever so small relationship. You two have some sort of mutual past, and considering you go to the same small school, there is a definite potential for a future, making this thirty second engagement that much more awkward.
I suggest this occurs because our school is lacking immensely in social capital. This deficit is the clear cause of why we are so uncomfortable in the elevator and countless other issues our school faces. If we define social capital as the communal trust and relationships that make up our community, I think it would do a world of good to work on strengthening these relationships. I am going to propose an application aimed at accumulating more social capital within our community. I would like to emphasize that I used the elevator scenario as a way to highlight the dire need for more social capital in our school, but the real life effects of my proposed application are intended to extend way beyond the parameter of the elevator. Social capital is an idea that impacts our daily lives, and our overall experience at NYU Shanghai.
What is it?
My application is called Karma, and its catchy little slogan is “what goes around comes around.” It is an app aimed specifically at building trust within a specific community, by allowing people to better coordinate favors. When I say favors, I refer to the little tasks people complete to help each other out, like picking up a Starbucks coffee for a friend. The application is limited to the use of individuals within a definite community. For example, let us create an NYU Shanghai Community, and invite all freshmen, sophomore, and study away students to join this group, much like the current “NYUSH — All Classes and Study Away” Facebook page or “Orgsync.”
Why do we need it?
Now that I have described the service, I want to talk about why it is so important in the process of shaping the social atmosphere at NYU Shanghai. People have a natural tendency to want to look like a good person, because we want other people to think we are decent individuals. Also, I believe many people are, inherently, slightly lazy. This is evident when it comes to tasks as
mundane as going to the lobby of Motel 268 to pick up food delivery. By creating a platform where people can do both, I think we can apply these human tendencies to produce something beneficial within our community.
As professor Shirky said in class one day, human beings will never ever get good at not trusting their friends. If we can increase the amount of trust in a community, we correspondingly increase the number of people you can consider “friends.” As Tricia Wang illustrates in her video “Dancing with Handcuffs: The Geography of Trust,” shared interests lead to a shared identity, which in turn lead to a shared responsibility. At NYU Shanghai, we all came here because of shared interests, and thus we have formed a shared identity. As a member of the student body, you have a shared responsibility, but to whom, and for what? The answer to this question comes in different forms, but I believe the ultimate answer is that we have a shared responsibility to help each other. To help each other excel in our studies, to feel comfortable at school, in short, we need to make sure as a whole we succeed.
How is it set up?
There is a newsfeed on the homepage where you can write a post asking for a favor. “Anyone have an extra Elementary II Chinese Book?” or “Anyone going to Family Mart soon and want to bring me back some Baozi?” These are examples of posts you can find on the newsfeed. Accompanying the post will be the name of the user who posted it, as well as an expiration date for each favor posted. On this date, the post will be taken down in order to ensure the posts do not stay up for prolonged, and unnecessary amounts of time. As a member of this community, you can scroll through the tasks of the day, and if you think you can do this favor for someone you can “accept” the post.
Karma Points
Upon joining Karma, you will start out with 10 Karma points. You can accumulate Karma points by doing favors for other people, and you can spend these points by asking for favors. There is no limit to how many Karma points you can receive, nor is there one to how many you can loose, meaning you can sink into negative numbers. The number of Karma points you currently have will be listed next to your name anytime you post for a favor, making it very salient. Positive numbers will be green while negative numbers will appear red.
Why Karma Points?
By granting Karma points, people will be motivated to accept other people’s favors. While completing favors for people in real life makes you look nice to the person you are completing them for, they are the only one who knows you did that favor. Karma takes this outcome and amplifies it to everyone in the community. Now, all 600 students at NYU Shanghai think you are a good person. It feels good doesn’t it? And hey, now you feel a bit more like helping people out. Also, the fact that you might have -100 Karma points listed next to your name in big red shows that you might not be helping people out as much as you could be. This is also a motivation to do favors for other people.
How many Karma points can you get per favor?
I thought about this for quite a while, and in order to avoid the repercussions of raising the cognitive load too high, I propose that every favor should be worth the same amount of Karma points. While I understand that a standard number of Karma points is extremely limiting in the freedom people have, I believe simplicity is best for this platform, as it prevents the possibility of many potential false positives. An example of a false positive might be, people collaborating with each other by posting easy favors and offering many points for it. This rigs the system because it is an easy way for people to accumulate unwarranted points. Additionally, adding the factor of an adjustable point value to the post would create too many distractions for the user. This pushes the cognitive load a bit beyond a tolerable level.
Additionally, if we are trying to raise social capital in our school, merely competing for points may not be the best way to do that. This method simply encourages competition, and no cooperation. If every favor is worth, for instance, one Karma point, then every favor is on the same playing field, and the favors are chosen based on the user, and the content of the favor, rather than how many Karma points it offers.
Profile Page
When you sign up for this application you will be asked to create a profile consisting of a profile picture and a brief bio much like Twitter or Instagram’s quick bio captions. A bio is not terribly important in a platform like this, since it is limited to a specific community. To some extent, everyone knows everyone already. To stay with the theme of simplicity, a lengthy bio, similar to Facebook’s extensive profile page, is not necessary. On this profile people can see previous favors you have asked for, as well as previous favors you have completed.
Photos
When you complete a favor, you can post a picture of yourself doing it, which will be attached to the corresponding favor post, as well as posted back on your profile in a “Photos of you” section. Photos will make the online experience feel less “online” and more integrated into your daily life. This is important for an application that aims to achieve real-life results.
Ranked Lists
Each day the people that have completed the most favors that day will be ranked at the top of the site’s page. There will also be a ranked list of all active users within a community, where you can consistently see where you fall in relation to everyone else. This overall rank will be listed on your profile for everyone to see. Additionally, this overall rank will serve as a type of sorting feature. On the newsfeed, the people with a better rank will have their request for a favors listed first, while those with lower rankings will be pushed to the bottom. The newsfeed is sorted first by rank, and second by expiration time.
Why use rank?
The rank is another technique to play on human motivation. When someone gives you Karma points there is a sense of affection. When you receive those points you feel that affection, and you also get attention. Being placed on a ranked list gives you further attention, and makes you look generous to the people who view the list. That is, if you are placed in a high position. Contrastingly, if you are placed low on the list, you feel the need to contribute more to the community, because you aren’t doing your fair share. Now, we all know that failing to do your fair share is a direct result of the tragedy of the commons. Tragedy of the commons is not something you associate with communities high in social capital, because these communities do not worry about the people within them taking advantage of the system. There is a certain level of universal trust present that binds the community together. By holding each person accountable, and Karma achieves this by giving users a ranking, you are removing the tragedy of the commons, and allowing social capital to flourish.
How do we get people to use it?
Apart from the previous stated motivational factors, the fact that it is limited to a community of people you already know gives the platform a level of trust difficult to find in other platforms. For instance, you might not necessarily post something as intimate on Twitter that you would on Facebook. Also, this small community means most things you see are in some way related to you, and therefore the information on this website is less subject to the need of a filtering mechanism, like an algorithm.
How does it actually build social capital?
Not only will this site increase social capital by making people feel more responsible and aware of their actions within the NYUSH community, but also it will make people realize that they are far from alone here. As a group that comes from many different backgrounds, we have quite a bit to offer. When I am stressed beyond all belief, people always tell me to “delegate.” Meaning, I need to make other people do some of the crazy stuff I have to do. So, if it is really easy for someone in our school to order 50 pizzas from a vendor that speaks only Chinese, I will save that hour of struggle and delegate that task to them. By the way, I am ordering 50 pizzas because there is a club event and not just because I really want pizza, at least for all you know. If you can take off some stress, and maybe meet a new person in the process, you not only gain trust in the community around you, but you begin to extend your secluded personal life into something larger.
Do I want to let other people do my stuff?
Sometimes I get a little bit defensive when I know I am perfectly capable of doing something someone else is doing for me. But, with a pool of 600 people, you will find there are some people who can do things better than you can, believe it or not. And you can use this tool to draw from the vast resource that is our student body. It is like a huge collaborative platform. People can choose what they want to do, and what they do not want to do. Not to mention there lies the possibility to tap into the ability of many different types of people. This has the potential to raise the quality of NYU Shanghai as a whole, because people who are good at things can take it off the hands of those who may not be as talented. I am certainly not referring to homework, although I guess that would be a certain false positive of this app.
How to transfer this to real life?
We, as humans, have always had a difficult time obtaining real life participation from online collaborative networks. This group is reminiscent of Chapter Eight of Professor Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. He mentioned how the social platform “Meetup” created new real-life groups after it discovered online meeting wasn’t enough. People crave human contact. Professor Shirky also goes on to speak about how it is easier to like people who are odd in the same ways you are odd, but it is harder to find them. For example, say you really need to find a background karaoke track to Thoroughly Modern Millie the Musical on a CD. Who needs this? And let alone, who on Earth can help you. You post this request on Karma, and someone answers it with a yes! What? Who out there cares about Broadway karaoke as much as I do? You have now found someone who shares an odd, yet familiar trait with yourself. Now, not only did you get your crazy favor accomplished, but you met someone who is a definite potential friend, who you may never have known about had it not been for this situation.
Repercussions of Exclusion
Inclusion implies exclusion, meaning the ostracized people at the bottom of the ranked list, will appear to be bad people who never help people out. They have a low number of Karma points, so they never accomplished favors, and perhaps they only asked people to do favors for them. This may not mean this person is selfish, perhaps they do not think to use the service unless they need a favor done for them. This is an obstacle the app needs to overcome. It needs to encourage people to do favors for others and not just ask people to do their work. Perhaps this is done by cell phone alerts when people post new favors, but then we cross into the discussion of how invasive we want this application to be.
All in all, Karma has the potential to really help out NYU Shanghai and its students. By giving us a place to better coordinate beneficial behavior, even more can be accomplished by all of us. It aims to encourage you to help out others, because you never know when you are going to need a favor in return. Also, it gives you a better chance of knowing and feeling comfortable with the dude who just stepped into the elevator next to you. I cannot promise Karma will make all awkward small talk disappear, but it certainly will help reduce its painfulness and frequency.
Works Cited
Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. New York: Penguin, 2008. Print.
“Tricia Wang — Dancing with Handcuffs: The Geography of Trust in Social Networks — Lift Conference.” Lift Conference. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
