Destroy the Twitterati and Pop Your Filter Bubble with F.A.T. Lab's FriendFlop

Do you trust hazy tweet sourcing because it's from a trusted media brand like the Associated Press? Do you retweet asinine observations from people solely because they have more followers than you? Do you dismiss thoughtful, relevant tweets because the tweeter's avatar has annoying floating sunglasses in it?

The answer to all of those questions is yes, because we're all humans, which means we're all selfish, biased, and terrible at social media. But thanks to the internet saviors at F.A.T. Lab, we can finally break out of the bonds of our own e-prejudices with a Chrome extension called FriendFlop.

FriendFlop mixes up posts on Twitter and Facebook so that one person's tweet is attributed to someone else, and so on and so forth. Breaking the filter bubble is the name of the FriendFlop game. It's designed to give you new perspective on social media by "dissolving your biases and reminding you that everyone is saying the same shit anyway," wrote F.A.T. Lab's Kyle McDonald, who created the extension with Lauren McCarthy. "And let’s face it, unique individual identities are so last year."

I installed it a little while ago, and honestly have no idea what's going on in my Twitter feed anymore. For example, these four tweets were actually by different people, and are pretty far from what the people FriendFlop attributed them to would normally discuss:

It works on Facebook, too. This is wonderful (bar added to protect the innocent):

But for the most part, the differences the changes are less apparent. For most people on my Twitter feed, FriendFlop's random assignation of name and tweet still makes sense, even if it's not the "normal" tone or style of a person. Perhaps that means that I follow a few too many similar people, or that everyone is multidisciplinary these days.

What is surprising is how, before getting used to the idea, I found myself saying "he thinks that?" or "if she says it, then it must be a good point." We internalize those biases when dealing with social media—and any flow of information, really. That's not a bad thing; it's important to analyse the source's credibility and expertise along with the info they deliver.

At the same time, it's become apparent—to me at least—that I spend a little too much time focusing on who's saying things, rather than what they're saying. I'd posit that's a regular problem with the hamster wheel that is Twitter, as it's easy for it to become an echo chamber of totally relevant insights solely because some dude who's Twitter famous said some weird shit. If anything, McDonald and McCarthy's wacky plugin is a panacea for the social-specific filter bubble we all subject ourselves to. Plus, it's pretty weird to see Bill Gates tweeting out contact info for Juicy J's booking agent.

@derektmead