Social Media Archaeology

“How are we going to find those historical documents for our anthropology class?” Libra complained.

“Well, we have to check out these relics and find a way to access them.” Joris exposited. Both of them were college students that were in a barren field right on the outermost parts of the campus. Joris grabbed one of these aforementioned relics. They were rusted and corroded metal squares that were excavated out of this digging site. He dusted off one of these artifacts and he grabbed a gossamer thin device that looked like a floating pink light with a USB attachment into one of the orifices. “Let’s see if this thing works.”

Libra grabbed her device and stuck it inside one of those squares. “It better. We both have to get at least a B on this thing or Dr. Earthshine’s going to flunk us.” She said. Libra also noticed that this corroded metal square metal opening. “Wonder what’s inside?” She opened it and some of the rust popped out. There was a thin screen on top with letters, numbers, and symbols on the bottom. “Hey, Joris. Open yours.” He did just that and got the same result. “I have a hunch that these things are what people from ancient times used to do things online.”

“You mean like a bulky physical version of our CompChips? That’s interesting.” Joris stated before pressing that florescent machine. “I wonder if these will boot up.” The screen illuminated although it flashed a bit like an old TV. “It’s working!” There was a home screen of some upset looking cat engrossing all these icons. “Why would anyone put a cat on a home screen. Geez, this civilization makes no sense.” He went to a icon that said “internet” on it to see what was going on.

“I got mine to work, too!” Libra exclaimed. Her’s had a desktop screen that had a sign that said “Can’t keep calm because I’m a fangirl.” She saw the time and date which stated that it was July 1st, 2015. Then it jumped to April 26th, 3500. “Wow, it changed to today’s time! That’s crazy!”

Joris looked through the internet and researched social media on the search bar which gave him a response in half a second. “These artifacts are like snails.” He commented as he looked through the search field. Joris saw the initials FB and looked through some of the stuff that was posted on there. It was a dead site, but it had been archived with all the things that happened back then. There were pictures of people taking these pictures called selfies when he started looking. Some of them had things attached to them like #NoFilter, #YOLO, or #HanginWitMahGurlz amongst other things associated with those pound signs.

Libra was getting the same finds except she sifted through pictures of people getting drunk at “clubs”, wearing provocative outfits, and these things called memes. “Were people so wild and crazy back then? Society must have been so hedonistic back in the 2010s.”

“You think that’s crazy? Check out some of these comments.” Joris started reading them to his classmate. “We B gettn plastered. LOL #ThugLyfe.” Joris shook his head. “Did people have a unique sense of language back then or were they really poor spellers?”

“Maybe it was like how people in the middle ages said Thee or Thou.” Libra guessed. “Check out this one: Ur a quieter. Does that person mean that he’s a quitter, by any chance?”

“That would make more sense. Let’s take notes and extract these files. I feel like these social media sites could be a gold mine for our project.” Joris said. They took the information that they needed and they tapped their foreheads which allowed them to type their papers in mid air with holograms.

A few days later…

“Great job on those essays.” Dr. Earthshine said to both Joris and Libra. “Both of you had great insight into people of the 21st century. I seem to have underestimated the misguided nature of those peoples worldwide. You both get an A-”

“Thanks, but why an A-?” Libra asked.

“It’s because you should have explained how hashtags were a little more, but other than that they were good. I’ll let the history department check out these things. We could do a whole study on people fifteen hundred years ago.”

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