I Fucking Love Science

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I Fucking Love Science (or IFLS for short) is a site primarily engaged in promoting science through the use of memes and macros on social media. It started as a Facebook page in 2012, created in 2012 by Elise Andrew, and is also now a popular science website, euphemised to IFLScience.

Contents

[edit] Facebook page

The Facebook page has grown exponentially in popularity (launch day it received 1,000 followers, in March 2012 it had 2.8 million followers, today it has over 17 million) and is maintained by a team of administrators.[1] Since its creation, the page has gradually drifted from being somewhat interesting ("This Week in Science" is about the only worthwhile thing left) to being a lot of clickbait cute/gross animal photos.

[edit] Popular science and clickbait

While admittedly the underlying goal of IFLS is a worthwhile one (to popularize science on social media for laypeople), the page has gradually followed a general trend of decline in its quality. This can be presumed to be from its popularity, since the need for mass layperson appeal generally means a watered down version of science reporting. The hard hitting questions, skepticism, and debunking would easily drive people away. The page has also been accused of mild clickbait type posts and not using proper credits for images.[2]

[edit] Sexism from followers

Apparently, many followers of the page were unaware that Elise was a woman. After sharing her personal twitter on the page (which included a real picture of herself)[3], followers littered the post with sexist comments (from comments like "Are there kitchens in space?" and "endless threads discussing her looks").[4]

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

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