TORONTO – A new report released by the University of Toronto suggests that 90% of recent Facebook posts are messages of love for recently deceased domestic animals.
The social media site, once vastly popular among its 2 billion users, is now mainly a platform for that girl you had one class with in college to eulogize the 17-year-old Siamese cat she apparently had.
“We’ve seen the data and it is shocking,” said Facebook representative Amit Paul. “That is why we will be changing our algorithm to give you, the consumer, what you clearly want: more dead pets.
According to the report, the average pet obituary post has twice as many likes and “sorry for your loss” es as the average human obituary. For example, Lucy Park’s 2000-word and 12 picture tribute to her naked molerat Fluffy’s battle with feline ebola had 40 more comments than than her post from earlier this year, “RIP Grandpa 🙁 ”
Even within the dead pet post category, there are clear hierarchies. Dogs do better than cats, which get way more post engagement than a dead lizard. Somehow dead fish do the best among the coveted 25-30 year old demo. Of course likes, comments and shares increase even further if the post is done as a facebook live video, or if the person making the post is hot.
“Of course, facebook isn’t completely dead pets yet. The remaining 10% of posts consist of political conspiracy theories, wedding photos, and of course targeted ads for cat urns and lizard taxidermists,” added Paul.
“We’re seeing a trend of specialization as more social media platforms enter the marketplace,” said Dr. Nadia Anand, U of T’s Assistant Professor of Memes. “For example, tumblr is for thirsty teenage gifsets, instagram is mainly badly-lit beach photoshoots, and twitter is 99% assholes screaming obscenities into the void.”.
Earlier this year, U of T released an unrelated study suggesting reddit’s mostly just links to satirical articles with the comment “I thought this was supposed to be satire”.
