In summer 2010, photographer Brandon Stanton created Humans of New York, a photography blog that has since catalogued more than 6,000 New Yorkers and become a best-selling book.
The blog’s success spawned spinoffs in locations all over the world, and earlier this year, four current MIT students created Humans of MIT, a Facebook page that profiles MIT community members through a single photo and the subject's own words.
Zachary Abel G
Some portraits discuss the ordinary aspects of MIT life while others veer towards the random, like wearing stilts for the first time.
Some lean towards the inimitable: Health Gould ’14 ponders trying out for the Olympic bobsled team and Lena Yang ’16 describes her custom MIT-themed brass knuckles.
“We created this page to dispel some of the myths about MIT,” says Emad Taliep ’14. “We hope that someone might read it say, ‘I guess I’m not the only one who feels that way.’”
The page, which began on February 17 and now has nearly 2,000 likes, was created by Taliep, Abra Shen ’16, Jenny Wu ’14, and Lawrence Wong G, who are members of Students at MIT Allied for Student Health (SMASH).
“There’s a perception that engineers and scientists are introverts and anti-social—they just go to their room and study,” says Wong. “That’s not true. There’s something unique and special about everyone and that’s reflected here."
Taliep says the most popular posts have described the stressful aspects of the MIT life, and the perseverance that goes with it.
"It took me a very long time to get to the point where I was comfortable setting my own expectations and following those, instead of following all the other expectations that other people have…But try to set your own expectations. When you have so much pressure around you, follow your own standards. That's probably the best thing I've taken away from MIT."
New subjects are posted three times per week and future profiles will include members of the MIT administration.
“We hope this really connects with the people of MIT,” Shen says. “We’re showing that you can have a conversation with anyone and everyone has a story.”
Perhaps the best indicator of the page’s success: a parody. The Facebook page Robots of MIT aims to tell the Institute’s stories through the eyes of its robots, “one robot at a time.”
According to its Facebook description, the page (which is not affiliated with Humans of MIT) paints intimate pictures that capture the beauty and vibrancy in every robot's personal narrative, which includes robot marriage and antagonism from humans.
While the robots depicted are only loosely affiliated with MIT, at least one, CSAIL’s Domo, can be found on campus.
