Category: Social Media

We live on the Fen Edge patch, the south side of the Cambridgeshire Fens. Pre-corona I ran an events page on Facebook, FEE – Fen Edge Events. Sharing gigs, shows, fairs, events, and other stuff of interest to the locals.

In the midst of corona, I have repurposed the page for quarantine times, social distancing, and self-isolation as the Fen Edge Un-Events page and am sharing virtual cinema clubs, isolation gigs, online quizzes, Zoom pub crawls etc.

Museums and galleries, zoos, cathedrals, and other places of interest, even local gardening enthusiasts, offering virtual tours and access to webcams for free.

Tips and tricks for homeschooling, drawing and sketching techniques, maths tutorials, quizzes for adults and children, free books (electronic and audio), magazines (many free online if you have a library card).

Virtual cinema, book clubs, shared music, DJing, live streaming gigs (classic, rock, pop etc) and shows (comedy, theatrical, musical, opera, ballet).

Recordings of local shows and gigs, including CTW pantos.

Home workouts.

Music lessons and tutorials.

Science stuff, such as astronomy and observing info, birdwatching, and more. Also, citizen science projects you can join from home.

Suggestions for sharing images such as beaches, silent cities, teddy bears, rainbows, jokes.

Live (pub) quiz nights.

There will also be occasional public service announcements (PSAs), about the disease, about resources and utilities, grants for the vulnerable, wellness and mental health advice.

STAY HOME, STAY EDUTAINED, STAY WELL – We will get through this together, apart!

Join here https://www.facebook.com/groups/cottenham

UPDATE: Well, it was worth a try…some of the vids I posted had a few hundred views and a handful of likes, one got 1500+ views and a few dozen likes. But the vast majority of the stuff on there is pointless nonsense and there seems to be little engagement to be frank. Even attempting to find STEM people has not really worked so far. I am going to leave it to brew on the backburner for a while over the Christmas period and come back to it next month.

You may have heard about TikTok, it’s a fairly new video platform (actually, it’s ancient, founded in September 2016!). Rumour has it that’s mostly youngster doing silly stunts and pranking each other and if it’s not that then its craftspeople and builders and decorators showing off their skills in plastering, bricklaying, tree-felling, carving, plastering, and other stuff. There’s been some 15-second activism that hit the headlines recently and seems to be growing…

I registered with the app soon after it launched, but never used it at the time. Well, as I mentioned here a few days ago I was inspired by engineer-inventor Dr Lucy Rogers to take a closer look as I imagined that there could be potential for engaging and perhaps even inspiring some of those youngsters with some sciencey videos.

My early postings are a bit eclectic, some music, some moths, a stylish stile, silly snowy filters, and others bits & bobs. Some seem to have been viewed several hundred times and liked by a few dozen users; others don’t seem to have hit the target at all.

Anyway, as I did with Twitter more than a decade ago, I thought it might be nice to start compiling a list of STEM people active on TikTok and maybe even encourage a few who aren’t but who have content that they share on other social media to take a look. So, I’ve made a start and will add anyone who is in STEM and sharing experiments, demos, and other pertinent stuff, just let me have your handle and I’ll take a look.

@sciencebase
@DrLucyRogers
@RuthAmos
@RobIves
@DavidDobrik
@ChemTeacherPhil
@Rahul
@InstituteofHumanAnatomy
@TheJKGamer1
@SarahMackAttack
@lab_shenanigans
@TheTikTokScientist

My friend Dr Lucy Rogers tweeted something she’d posted on Tik Tok, a short clip of an English oak in its autumnal finery. Very nice I thought…

…more fool me. Ten minutes later I had re-registered on Tik Tok and was scrolling through vids like a man possessed. If Youtube was the previous tech generation’s cocaine, then Tik Tok is basically crack. If it’s not crack cocaine to Youtube’s cocaine, then it’s definitely its crystal to Vimeo’s meth, or perhaps it’s just “tirami” to Vine’s “su”.

Needless to say I have now posted a few snippets to test the water, got a few likes already and a tiny clutch of followers including Dr Lucy Rogers.

So far, I’ve posted a Fieldfare feeding in our garden during the Beast from the East weather period, a folk band in a Greek Taverna, the rotating propellers of an aeroplane on which we flew in September, one of us driving over the Tyne Bridge, and am just about to put up a video of our dog running in the snow. Exciting stuff, huh? What a time to be alive! Oh, yes, I’m @sciencebase as you’d probably expect.

UPDATE: Lucy highlighted a couple of other TikTokers in our realm: RuthAmos and RobIves. I will add to the list as new STEM people turn up.

For a while back there, I had more than 54,000 followers on Twitter, for what that’s worth. Current number after some losses over the last couple of years through general attrition, spam and bot clearouts etc, now means my follower count is down to about 43,000 followers. I did an analysis of declared pronouns, bio details and name on a sample of 2,000 of the most recently active based on 200 tweets in my timeline (using a freely available tool called proporti.onl)

The breakdown of followers is as follows: 32% male, 16% female, 52% not known.

The proportions are different for the people I myself follow. I don’t tend to keep following people who don’t follow me and I limit the total number to 2000, at the moment it’s just under 1800 that I follow.

44% male, 26% female, 30 not known