According to Wikipedia, the most sold video game ever is Super Mario Bros, whether alone or in all its subsequent upgrades. Even if you have doubts in Wikipedia, the numbers are so staggeringly wide in gap that they can’t be wrong in terms of order. Regardless, this Facebook tagging picture meme is for those fans of Super Mario Bros. I didn’t label the characters because if you play the game, you have to know the characters, whether they are friend or foe, what special powers they possess and how you can nullify or put it to use to succeed in the game. If you generally know all that, labeling the names is just wasted space.
Here’s how to get this graphic for your Facebook fun:
Click on the picture below to get it at full size.
Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
Daniel J. Levitin wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The World in Six Songs, supported by a great website with the many music samples referenced, among other great related material.
My basic paraphrasing of the concept is this. All the songs in the world could be fit into at least one of six categories providing an evolutionary benefit to humanity, often ultimately tied to our social nature.
The book and website offer far more detailed interpretations, of course, but I will expand on my paraphrasing with each post and the associated topic.
In a series of posts, I will describe each of the six categories in brief, one at a time:
I will describe what the categories are about because they are not as limited in scope as the category names suggest. I will then supply one of my choices and ask all readers to do the same if they so wish. In the seventh post of the series, I will offer the chance to put the song choices all together so readers can read the entire set on one post. I do this because it would be a long post to describe all six categories at once, but to have all the answers in one place might be nice.
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This post focuses on Songs of Friendship
July 30th add-on in italics, from Dan Levitin in a summary article
Friendship songs centre around group cohesion, whether it be for war, or the bonding of different cliques in high school. For example, in prehistoric warfare, attackers would sometimes ambush another tribe using loud instruments (especially drums) to surprise the targets while they were still sleeping. Countertactics employing the use of singing may also have been used as a signal that the group was awake. These songs serve to protect a tribe/group or succeed in the takeover of another. In the context of social groups, they provide a sense of community and belonging, bringing people together.
These songs serve the purpose of bringing people together to promote cooperation in one form or another in order to survive, or at least make life more tolerable. Applied to various situations, cooperation could promote any of these situations:
Working together
Attacking/defending together
Supporting each other
Friendship
Averting conflict
Forging group identity (maybe not formally but like a bonding anthem for a group of “outcasts”)
Others
The evolutionary value is that humans interact socially, whether in friendly or destructive ways. If we can avoid the latter, like in wars, we are more likely to survive and thrive as a species. Our social bonds are essential to our well-being, and we do survive and thrive better in groups, so anything that helps us in these causes are beneficial to our evolution as a species.
Audio sample of songs from the Friendship chapter in The World in Six Songs can be found on the website. No direct link was available, but click on the Songs menu option and appropriate page number range link carrying pages 41 to 82. Please note that not all songs are meant as samples of Friendship songs. Some are just referenced material in the book text.
It fits into the Friendship subcategory of various bonding purposes, but I do believe that true friends ultimately help each other. There isn’t any other song I know and feel tells someone they’ve got a true friend better than this Carole King song. Nobody sings it better, either!
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What is your choice for Song of Friendship?
Please leave your choice as a comment.
Lyrics and YouTube/audio link would greatly enhance your answer so readers can know more about your choice. They are not necessary, though, and not possible if no lyrics or version exist.
I saw these tagging meme graphics on Facebook, but they weren’t in the best formats for Facebook so I improved them in various ways to share. I did not contribute to the text, though, so if you were offended, please don’t blame me. The first set is a bunch of South Park characters, with appropriately offensive labels in some instances.
The second is Doodle Friends characters, from where I do not know other than that they are part of a Facebook application.
The final one are just some personalities attached to a drawing style I do not know.
Here’s how you can get any of these memes to use:
Click on the poster you want below to get it at full size.
Right click on that picture and save to your computer.
In a series of posts, I will describe each of the six categories in brief, one at a time:
Digital Citizen 