Page 19 - IAV Digital Magazine #498

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Facebook Ant Colony Roleplaying Group Grows To 1.8MMembers Amid Pandemic
By Daniel Uria
May 12 (UPI) -- A Facebook group in which users pretend to be an ant colony has grown to more than 1.8 million members since social distancing procedures to prevent the spread of COVID- 19 were imple- mented in the United States.
The group --
titled "A group where we all pre- tend to be ants in an ant colony" -- has grown from 100,000 members at the beginning of March to more than 1.8 million, its creator, Tyrese Childs, told NBC News.
Members of the group role play as members of an
ant colony, post- ing pictures of ants participating in various activi- ties including crawling on food and carrying leaves.
They then type actions such as "DIG," "LIFT" and "BITE" as they act out tasks in service of the colony's queen.
The group is pri- vate, requiring an approval period before prospec- tive members can join and post. It asks those inter- ested in joining a series of ques- tions including whether they have watched the Pixar film A Bug's Life.
"We have so many user requests and
pending posts that it has become a job for me," said Childs, a college student from North Dakota. "I think people are searching for something to do right now. You can scroll so much on social media."
It also has a list of rules that guide the role-playing experience and bar any discus- sion of "human politics" in addi- tion to hate speech and sexu- ally explicit, gross or violent content.
"We have filtered out all the COVID-19 posts so it's like an escape," Childs said.
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