PALO ALTO, Calif. — Most Instagram users share their photos
instantly. Leila Khan sometimes waits six weeks. That is how long she has held
off on posting a photo of her eating a spoonful of watermelon.
Ms.
Khan, a 13-year-old from Palo Alto, Calif., makes elaborate preparations for
her Instagram posts, and one of her main criteria is finding the right
occasion. She finally found a reason to post her watermelon photo: National
Watermelon Day, on Monday.
“I’m
gonna be like ‘P.S.: It’s National Watermelon Day,’ ” Ms. Khan said to
some friends during a recent trip to the mall.
Assuming that National Watermelon Day goes like the many novel
national holidays that have grown in step with social media, Ms. Khan will not
be alone. People will discuss watermelons on Twitter. Some Grinch might chime
in with how many gallons of water it takes drought-stricken California to grow
a single watermelon. Maybe others, feeling left out, will ask all their
Facebook friends why their feed is suddenly full of watermelons.
Social
media did not create National Watermelon Day, which the National
Watermelon Association has
been celebrating every Aug. 3 for as long as anyone there can remember. Strange
holidays are a decades-old tradition that gives trade groups something to
promote and newscasters a way to fill airtime.
What
social media has done, however, is create the need for billions of people to
have something to say. The result is a string of new holidays likeTweed Day and Uncommon Instrument
Awareness Day that
seem to exist only on the Internet.
“Everyone
is trying to find something to talk about when there is nothing to talk about,”
said John-Bryan Hopkins, a social media consultant who runsFoodimentary,
a website dedicated to food holidays.
Ms.
Khan does not “have a special thing about watermelons,” and the picture of her
eating one was not a momentous event. It was a hot day in June. She and a
friend bought a watermelon. Someone took a picture.
Which
raised the question: Why wait until Aug. 3 to post the photo?
“It would be weird if I randomly posted a picture of me eating a
watermelon,” Ms. Khan explained.
“But
if there’s, like, context,” said her friend Lucy Nemerov, also 13.
“National
Watermelon Day — then it’s like a post,” Ms. Khan said.
Americans
spend a little more than an hour a day using social media, according to the
market research company eMarketer.
On Instagram and Twitter, every day is a national occasion to post a picture of
one’s friends, pets, dinner or haircut.
Whether
any of these count as holidays is something of a philosophical question. Take
Throwback Thursday — #TBT on social media — a weekly occasion on which millions
of people share childhood pictures, outfits with leg warmers and other bygone
moments. It is far from a national holiday, yet it is as reliable as Christmas
— at least on social media.
“A
lot of these things lead into things that become more mainstream,” said Blake
Barnes, a product manager at Instagram. “My mom posted a TBT a few weeks ago.”
Cecilia Salas, a 19-year-old college student and prolific user
of social media, said she averaged about one “national day” photo a week. Some
recent ones included National Ice Cream Day, National Mac and Cheese
Day andNational Hug Your Cat Day.
“Usually
I’ll just look at whatever is trending on Twitter, and if I like it, I’ll
participate, and if not, I’ll look at the pictures,” she said. “I take a lot of
selfies, so I tend to use those if it goes along with the theme.”
On Wednesday, for instance, she posted a photo of the bottom
half of her face for National Lipstick Day.
Ms. Salas took the picture three months ago. “I was saving it for the perfect
moment,” she said.
Nobody
gets the last word on anything on the Internet, and this includes holidays. Chase’s
Calendar of Events, which has been published since 1957 and includes
hundreds of offbeat holidays, including International Hug a
Medievalist Day, is the closest thing to an authority. But today the
book has to compete with a growing number of calendar sites like Brownielocks,Checkiday, Wellcat and Days
of the Year, which lists about 1,300 holidays, including Milk Chocolate Day, Girlfriends Day and Take Your Houseplant for
a Walk Day.
Mr.
Hopkins, of Foodimentary, said he had made up somewhere around 120 food
holidays. He revises the calendar annually, adding new holidays while retiring
others that fail to catch on. This year, Foodimentary will celebrate its first IPA Day, named
for the hoppy style of beer. National Noodle Ring Day is out.
Mr.
Hopkins, a social media consultant, does not sell advertising on his site. He
does it for the attention — and clicks.
But
Marlo Anderson has made a business out of holidays, charging clients like the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee $1,500 to have Jan. 7
designated National Bobblehead Day on his site,National
Day Calendar.
“I guess we could have declared the day ourselves,” said Phil Sklar, co-founder and chief executive of
the bobblehead museum. “But going through the National Day Calendar gives us
legitimacy.”
With
so many competing calendars, conflicts are unavoidable. Mr. Hopkins, for
instance, counts at least four National Brownie Days.
William
Wildridge tried to solve that problem by letting the masses decide. His site, WhatNationalDayIsIt.com,
uses an algorithm to sort through the millions of Twitter postings containing
“national” and “day.” The idea is that today is whatever day Twitter says it
is.
He
has analyzed 2.3 million Twitter posts and, in the process, received an
unfiltered look at the Internet’s collective id. What he has learned is that
people say a lot of nasty things on Twitter, but the things that are passed on
tend to be heartfelt and positive.
Take
the #NationalSexDay hashtag, which gets started a lot but stays low on his list
because nobody wants to retweet it. The days that are shared the most are for
best friends, siblings, kissing and hugs.
Days
of commemoration can be about more than watermelons and hugs, of course. The
United Nations has recognized Nelson Mandela’s birthday, July 18, as Mandela Day.
But this poses a problem for Jono Alderson, who runs Days of the
Year. It is hard to reconcile having a day that recognizes a man who fought
apartheid in a calendar that lists days for celebrating lollipops, umbrella
covers and cows.
“It’s
slightly awkward,” said Mr. Alderson, who lists July 18 as National Caviar Day.
Mr.
Alderson’s site is based in York, England, but he says 90 percent of its
traffic comes from the United States.
That
is not an accident. One of the first things the founders did after revolting
against Britain was to ditch the crown’s calendar, says Leigh Eric Schmidt,
author of “Consumer
Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays.”
Since
then, the United States has created a number of new holidays that incorporate
two very American traits: self-invention and an excuse to sell products. Trade
groups invented most of the lesser-known celebrations, Mr. Schmidt said, but
social media has given the power back to the people.
“It seems to me that it’s been taken out of the hands of the
trade organizations,” he said. “That’s not where the creativity is coming from
anymore.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks