I have now pulled my comments out of three social media exports. Not the posts – the comments. The things I typed underneath other people’s posts.
There are 13,116 comments, amounting to 137,832 words.
More than I ever posted on Instagram. More than I ever posted on LinkedIn. Getting on for twice what I posted on Facebook.
Impressed? Don’t be: the median comment is six words long. Only 179 of them reach sixty words. In effect, I’ve downloaded 15 years of saying thank you, and congratulations, and yes exactly this.
Still. Imagine being told you had to type all of it out again. A frightening version of hell.
Not only because it’s a lot of typing but also because it’s one-sided.
The export gives me my half, and not one word of what anybody said to me. Not the post I was replying to, not the reply that came back. Three platforms, three exports, and all of them hand over my side of the conversation and nothing else.
So: 137,832 words of a man talking to himself where, once, there were other people.
The machine kept both halves. It gave me one.
That’s a lot of work, building a machine for Mark Zuckerberg and his pals.
The numbers
| Where | Comments | Words | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6,214 | 73,924 | 7 words | |
| 2,078 | 29,457 | 8 words | |
| 4,824 | 34,451 | 5 words | |
| Total | 13,116 | 137,832 | 6 words |
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