What does Jell-O have to do with social media?
What does Jell-O have to do with social media? As it turns out, plenty!
I’m in this fun, quirky Facebook group called “Disgusting Vintage Recipes”. It’s good-natured silly fun, full of 🤮 recipes from our recent past.
What stands out is the propensity to incorporate gelatin with EVERYTHING. It’s just not something we see anymore, but apparently it was once a great delicacy to create all manner of “salad” from gelatin and various other foods.
I still experience holdovers from this culinary approach, particularly at family festivals. Our Thanksgiving table typically features two gelatin side dishes. My mother’s is cherry Jell-O, red wine, canned cherries, and vanilla ice cream. It’s definitely my fave. My mother-in-law’s consists of cherry and lemon Jell-O, cranberries, orange, walnuts, and celery. It’s definitely my second fave.
So, you are probably wondering why I am talking about legacy gelatin dishes on LinkedIn 🤔
Someone in the group recently asked why so many recipes of that era use gelatin.
Another member offered a response that surprised me, until I thought about it...
👉 To show that you could afford a refrigerator 👈
💡 OF COURSE!!! 🤯
Here’s why it made sense to me. 100% of human behavior is social signaling. 100%.
A few related premises…
➡️ The human species is “successful”. That’s a complicated and controversial statement, but just grant it for the sake of argument. We can get into it over a 🍺 sometime if you want :)
➡️ A major factor of this success is our cooperative social nature
➡️ ”Social” is derived from the Latin "socius", which translates to either "friend" or "ally"
➡️ As much as we hate tribalism, it is merely our self-aware sense of these dynamics at work, baked DEEP into our 🧬
Hence, we are CONSTANTLY signaling our social groups and status in everything we do.
The next time you meet someone, notice your instincts. You are subconsciously evaluating their…
Clothing
Car
Speech
Grooming
Company
Friends
Family
EVERYTHING we do, say, purchase, or reveal sends a signal of some kind.
And here’s the kicker. The signals you DON’T realize you are sending are 10X stronger than the ones you do.
This is why it is so so SO important to be intentional about EVERYTHING that happens on your social media. Because it is SOCIAL. I have even trained my brain 🧠 to call Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and the like “Social Signaling Media”. Truly, that’s the name I give them in my thoughts 💭. It makes a difference.
So, can you afford a refrigerator? If you bring Jell-O to your next dinner party, it means you can. But that’s not a significant social signifier anymore. I guarantee, however, that 100% of what you put on social media IS. And your prospective customers and team members are watching your signals👀 CLOSELY , whether you, or they, realize it or not.
If you want to change your social status in the marketplace, change your signals.