The Knowaguy State

Long before the age of texting, tweeting and posting, Rhode Islanders had their own brand of social media called Knowaguy. Knowaguy was where we went whenever we needed something. Need a job? A plumber? Someone to take hazardous waste off your hands? Don’t worry. I knowaguy. You knowaguy? I knowaguy. Of course you knowaguy. This is Rhode Island. We all knowaguy. Often it’s the same guy, but that’s a post for another day.

Our longstanding culture of “knowaguy” may help explain a factoid buried in Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” cover story on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (the piece came out on Jan. 3, but we’re a little behind in our magazine reading). Time reports that the world’s most popular social platform is used more in Rhode Island than in any of the Other 49. As of the New Year, 65 percent of the Ocean State used Facebook. (The lowest rate, at 30 percent, was recorded by New Mexico.)

In one respect, it seems odd that the nation’s second-most densely populated state (behind New Jersey) would be the most avid users of Facebook, a site that allows people to stay in touch over long distances. But the convenience of remote communication, it turns out, may not be Facebook’s most vital function. The greater lure is the sense of being part of a community.

Rhode Island’s pre-existing social culture as a place of jostling elbows – whether at the big tables of shore dining halls or the cramped counters and bars of diners and pubs – lends itself ideally to the Facebook format. Relationships matter here in a way that they don’t everywhere. And everything is personal.

My friend Tom and I were talking about this subject yesterday, after a round of golf and during a couple of pints in Warren. Although Facebook is a global phenomenon, Tom believes that it still works best in closed or tight-knit communities, like college campuses, from which it originated. Rhode Island is its own campus, its own neighborhood. Historically we have a low migration rate. Most people are born here and die here. Even those who leave usually come back. [Consider the unofficial University of Rhode Island fight song: I’m Rhode Island born and Rhode Island bred and when I die I’ll be Rhode Island dead…] Which is why in this fragmented time, when a nation that used to gather around the TV to watch Cronkite now chooses between 700 channels and multiple types of media, it’s still possible in Rhode Island to have a conversation that the whole state can engage in. It’s like that old “Coffee Chat” segment on “Saturday Night Live:”

Rocky Point Park. The Blizzard of ’78. The Station Fire.

Discuss.

[Side note: Rhode Island itself was once a topic of discussion on “Coffee Chat.” It went something like: “Rhode Island…Neither a road, nor an island. Discuss.”]

There may be other factors for Rhody’s high Facebook use. The Ocean State is first in the nation for access to broadband coverage, which certainly helps. Its unemployment rate (over 11 percent at last count with the national average hovering around 9 percent) is still one of the highest in the country, so it’s possible that more people in Rhode Island have more time to log on. But it’s also just as likely that Facebook is the high school yearbook that you never put away in the closet, and the whole state of Rhode Island is the high school class that never graduated. Part of our identity as Rhode Islanders is knowing (and being interested in) what other Rhode Islanders are up to at any given moment, whether friends, neighbors, strangers or Buddy.

Your turn: Why does Rhode Island use Facebook more than any other state?