{"id":987,"date":"2007-09-27T21:20:36","date_gmt":"2007-09-27T11:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=987"},"modified":"2007-09-27T21:20:36","modified_gmt":"2007-09-27T11:20:36","slug":"on-the-etiquette-of-pokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"On the etiquette of pokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago someone on Facebook<\/strong><\/a> poked me – and then wrote on my wall that they were not sure if they knew me well enough to poke, and whether this was too intrusive.<\/p>\n

I had to think about that one. Where does a poke sit, ontologically speaking, – especially a virtual poke? <\/p>\n

Clearly a poke is attention seeking, but it’s also a way of saying ‘I’m thinking of you’ – without the complication of words which could be misconstrued. Pokes are relatively undemanding – at least virtual ones are, so there is little pressure – I can choose to respond or not as I see fit and no-one will be upset if I don’t poke back, or if I do. <\/p>\n

It is a way of keeping in touch without having to think too hard about a response, and it takes up little bandwidth, unlike the reams of emailed jokes and videos that seem to serve the same function in the email world.<\/p>\n

I suppose, like any form of communication it could be seen as adding marks to an otherwise blank space, but it clearly performs a narrative and above all social function. And I suspect that that is why Facebook pokes are so popular – and it’s no accident that the poke function was one of the first to be added to Facebook and forms part of the core of the software.<\/p>\n

As a micro-function of social software a poke helps to enact a sense of community and acknowledges that someone out there is thinking of you!<\/p>\n

Cheers
\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while ago someone on Facebook poked me – and then wrote on my wall that they were not sure if they knew me well enough to poke, and whether this was too intrusive. I had to think about that one. Where does a poke sit, ontologically speaking, – especially a virtual poke? Clearly a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,8,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-new-media","category-technology","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}