Social Monkeys.com

Wikipedia defines Human nature as “the set of psychological characteristics, including ways of thinking and acting, that all normal human beings have in common.” Although the article goes into some depth about influential schools of thought ranging from Plato to Aristotle and Marx to Freud, for me, it was the reality game show, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader that made me start thinking about the nature of humanity.

Although the show originated in the US, it has since propagated to nearly 40 countries around the world. The basic premise is an adult contestant competes with fifth graders to answer trivial trivia questions taken from school textbooks. Like other game shows, money is earned incrementally based on the number of correct answers and there are a few forms of assistance to help the contestant out. Adult contestants could walk away with a million dollars if they answer all the questions correctly, however, most leave the game either by quitting, or answering incorrectly. The punch line, of course, is that the losing contestant must profess to the camera, “I am not smarter than a fifth grader.”

The show works, of course, because we can sit from the safety and comfort of our homes, and pass judgement on others. (How can you not know the answer to, “If you cross the northern border of the U.S., what country would you be in?“) It’s the same reason why we find celebrity soap opera so fascinating: Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, and Tom Cruise. It’s why Rick Mercer’s Talking to Americans ’satirical’ perceived American ignorance of Canada and the rest of the world works. We like gossip and we like to watch people being foolish. David Bauder from the Associated Press, described the attraction of Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader:

Having fifth graders onstage to help the adults, as opposed to competing directly against them as the title might suggest, only increases the humiliation potential. Foxworthy, in his drier-than-toast manner, is there to stick the needle in further.

“It’s fun to watch people come on and make fools of themselves,” said Marc Berman, analyst for Media Week Online. “It’s sort of like the `Gong Show’ of game shows, in a way. It’s amazingly addictive.”

SOURCE: “Kids Outsmart Adults on ‘5th Grader’

But, we also like things that make us feel good about life. Dewett Jones asks us to Celebrate What’s Right With The World. Bradley Trevor Greive cheers us up through his Blue Day Book series in 115 countries through 15 million copies. We want to be inspired from Malcolm X to John Lennon, Mother Theresa to Nelson Mandela, heck, even Tony Robbins gets some of us going.

We get sucked into social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace because to a certain extent, we like to peek into the lives of others. A socially accepted form of voyeurism or benchmarking, perhaps. We find anonymous secrets like PostSecret fascinating. Web 2.0 is a trend on the net where technology and webdesign is converging in a series of web-based communities, social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies with the aim of fostering creatitity, colloboration, and sharing amongst users.

A Question of Human Nature

So, the question is, given the opportunity to bitch about life, or to celebrate the positive side of humanity, which will people choose? We’re launching an experiment starting on March 1, 2008. For 100 days, we’re going to try to create two parallel online social communities. At the end of the 100 days, we’ll look to see which community was more popular.

One community will revolve around getting things off your chest and saying the things you wish you could say about all the little (and big) things that bother you…

SnitchandBitchCafe.com

Life’s not fair. Work sucks. Your boss is a tyrant. Your in-laws hate you. Your coworkers are Muppets. What’s worse, your friends are tired of your bitchin’ and complaing. Thank God, we’ve got a sympathetic ear.

Snitch and Bitch Cafe is the place to get it off your chest: Write that nasty email you wish you could send. Confess how you secretly got back at that stuck-up customer. Tell your boss how incompetent they are. Blow the whistle on that scandal at work…

The other community will revolve around the idea that random acts of kindness create tiny little series of chain reactions spreading through the world via the butterfly effect…

RipplesOfKindness.com

Six degrees of separation. That’s what connects the 6.6 billion people living on Earth today. While the actual number of links between people varies based on the study conducted, it’s generally accepted that it’s a small world.

Have you ever received an act of kindness? How did you feel? Did you pass it on or pay it forwards? Given that we’re all interconnected, what happens when a random act of kindness occurs? A moment of happiness? A smile? A pause from the rat race? Do positive behaviours move through society like a ripple through water?

Ripples of Kindness is about encouraging those sorts of ripple effects and dropping more pebbles in the pond.

So. Which site are you going to visit today?