Snowballs and Networks

I’m trying to do a better job documenting how the Internet1 does things that make me happy. It’s fun to watch different flows and people come together to take things to another level. These interactions make up my personal Internet and I hope seeing them might help someone else build their Internet, this amalgam of humans and technology, to make them happy as well.

The Input

Somewhere in one of my feeds I came across Selfies at Funerals. I had a really hard time figuring out who would do something like that. The amount of ego really amazed me.

Open Reflection

So I put this out on Twitter2.

I made the following bad example after a few of my original thoughts turned out far too gruesome even for me.
flexingselfie

Feedback/Amplification

William Berry then sent me an email that was something like this later blog post. Essentially, William had done a much better example using Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth. With this as inspiration, I put in some after trick or treating time and made four historical examples.

It’s also now made its way to a #ds106 assignment which four people have completed at this point- me, William, Gillian Lambert (awesome English teacher), and Miss Kuhn (Goochland Represent).

Outside of that, we have the two kind gentlemen from Glen Allen HS behind the Between the Bells History podcast weighing in with the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Audience/Seeds

Historical Selfie Hits

The fact that I could get this many people interested in playing along creating historical ‘selfies’ ought to prove there are people out there for you no matter how odd your interests. I include the views on the Flick images as seeds planted that might grow in time. Whatever energy I invest in the Internet comes back to me sevenfold.


1 Information, people, actions/interactions, habits- or something like that.

2 Note how I avoided using the word ‘tweeted’.