The Facebook Watercooler

It has intrigued me how my Facebook news feed is often filled up with the posts of a lot of the stay-at-home mums that are friends.  Perhaps part of this is just the stage of life that I am in, where a lot of my friends have young families.  But I also think there is something more to it than that.


Now, before anyone gets upset, I am not trying to have a go at stay-at-home mums, nor the amount they fill my Facebook news feed with a lot of everyday going on type posts.  But I have a theory...

Not so long back, my wife was away for a time and so I got to play the stay-at-home dad role.  Just for a bit of fun, I thought I would join the many mums that fill my news feed and post a number of times a day, even if there wasn't really anything worth posting about.  So I posted about the mundane, as that was mostly what filled my time looking after the kids.  Ever since though, I have had this itch in the back of my mind as to what makes posting like this so attractive to the many mums I see doing it.

Then, recently, a blogging mum put out a list of words to inspire mum's to take a daily photo to then share it on a social medium.  Some of the mums in my friends list took up the challenge - including my wife - and so my news feed started to get a photo a day from all these mums.

What is really interesting in this for me is that once upon a time, when you had to use that stuff called film to take photos, and you had to pay for the film and the processing, cameras were for special occasions - birthdays, Christmas, holidays, exciting times - except of course if you were a photographic artist.  Photos were not for the mundane, for the everyday, for taking photos of clothes dryers, the sky, the letterbox, a flower in the garden, etc, etc.  This activity, in a way, has turned those stay at home mums into photographic artists.  I'm not trying to knock the photos I have seen here - there have been some crackers - but just point out that many of the photos are photos that in the days of film, just wouldn't have been taken.  Let alone in the first days of the camera!

It was this little avenue of thought that made me arrive at my theory that Facebook is the watercooler of the stay-at-home mum (or dad I should certainly add, but I haven't any of these filling my news feed). 

Those of us who go into a work environment will usually, on a daily basis, have opportunities to "post" the mundane orally into the watercooler conversations that happen throughout the day.  We talk about sport, movies or TV shows, about what a child did or did not do, about an experience we had, or sport again.  A lot of these conversations are not groundbreaking and were they written down as a string of Facebook posts and comments would most times not make the most exciting reading.  But it's not what is being said that is the point....it's the getting together and sharing a social moment before getting back into the work that needs to be done.

Whilst I am not going to sing the praises of Facebook, I think in at least this instance, it may be that it is a platform that has provided an opportunity for the stay-at-homers that was difficult before.  A way to have something of a social, watercooler moment as they take a couple of minutes out from what needs to be done.  Facebook allows for the conversation to be less restricted by time - something useful for those working on a chaos kids timeline.  Facebook allows for a number of people to join the conversation - something useful for those who know the quickest way to unleash chaos is to make a phone call.  Facebook allows intermittent attention - something useful when there are constant interruptions.

Sure, there are negatives to this as well, but I think they can wait for different blogspot watercooler day.