The Oversharer Social Experiment

Moodle Post 8

I did the oversharer experiment. The first person I contacted was my friend’s mother who I never really talk to unless I go to her house. I texted her about random stuff in my day such as “I’m working out.” or “I’m going to eat dinner now.” She did not respond for a while. I am thinking she ignored them or thought I send these to the wrong person. As I increased the texts, she finally responded and asked, “Are you sending these to the right person?” I didn’t explain and just said yeah. Then she responded with, “Okay why are you sending me these?” Then I explained and said it was an experiment for a class. She said okay and didn’t respond afterwards.

I did one other person and it was a student at my college. I don’t know this person well at all and I just acquired their number for another class project. I started to text them more about my everyday life. They responded faster than the other person and said, “This is nice to know but why are you texting me?” I didn’t respond to that question yet because I wanted to continue the experiment longer. I ignored that answer and later sent another random text about my life. They ignored it. I send around four more text messages until they responded again asking why I was doing this. Then I responded this was for a class project. They understood and then stop texting.

This experiment helped me see that not everyone is willing to share information with strangers. We are friendly to an extent and then if someone becomes too personable it makes someone uncomfortable. I would have never done this experiment of my own free will because I hate awkward social situations even if they are though texting. People do not care what someone does every single second of the day even if it is your parent because I asked my mom what she would do in this situation. She said that she would ignore the stranger and the acquaintance ask why are they texting me. Personally, I would ignore both people or I was just block them. This was a unique experiment and gets you thinking how people use social media and what are the norms of the different medium.