Facebook,
a social network created by Harvard genius Mark Zuckerberg quickly
expanded to a point where it has over 800 million active users. 4
percent of photos ever taken by the
human race now are visible somewhere on facebook. In the book written
by Daniel Miller, Tales From Facebook, he studies and examines 12
different people who all use facebook to fulfill a specific need which
differ from case to case. Facebook is a free online
service which in his studies realizes that it can have a large effect
on people’s lives. Daniel interviews each of his test subjects and
answers are very different from one person to the next. The test
subjects were based out of Trinidad in his book.
It
was demonstrated last class that most people have a facebook account,
including every person in our class. Therefore most people can relate to
the stories and interviews that
are being written by Daniel Miller. But before certain cases are looked
at, it is interesting to notice that none of the test subject are from
the US but instead are all from overseas. Americans who have facebook
can seemingly relate to other Americans, but
looking at foreigners, it could bring up different things that are not
usually seen in the US.
There
were two cases in particular that I found interesting in relating their
lives to facebook, Vishala and Aaron. They are both young people and
reading their interviews and realizing
what they think of and use facebook for in relation to myself was
interesting to look at.
In
the case of Vishala, it made me think of my identity, in other words
how facebook allows people to see me on the internet. An example of this
would be at a party or a get together
with a group of people, someone always has a camera and is taking
pictures. Some people just try to get in these pictures because they
know they will more than likely make it onto facebook at some point and
will be displayed in their profile and pictures.
Its also easy enough, with the technology today, to take a picture of
yourself and post it on facebook immediately from your phone or device
to depict yourself in the way you would like to be seen. At the same
time, it is just as easy to get rid of a picture
on your facebook profile by simply untagging yourself, and there is
even a security setting on facebook that makes sure your confirm that it
is you in the tagged picture before it appears on your profile. It is
all a comparison between your actually self and
facebook self and trying to match the two identities.
In
the other interview that I found interesting in looking at Aaron,
someone who uses facebook mainly to communicate after school. It is
interesting to look at this case because
now a days there are so many forms of technology that allow for easy
forms of communication. Growing up there was never facebook until my
freshmen year in high school. I would use forms of messengers instead to
communicate with friends and once and a while
might use the phone. There was MSN messenger, yahoo messenger etc.
Facebook makes communicating over the internet easier and amusing as
well. You can post videos or pictures on another person’s wall and there
is also facebooks own type of messenger that is
used to talk with fellow friends that may be online at the same time as
you are.
Facebook
is a different view of oneself and after reading this book, facebook is
used for a variety of different reasons which include communication and
selling products along with
playing games, etc. Not only in the US is this prevalent but as the
book suggests, it is becoming a worldwide phenomena. Do you use facebook
in any way other than communicating?
3 comments:
I was most intrigued this week by Vishula’s experience with Facebook. Like the lead blogger, it made me think about the relationship between identity and Facebook. As with other mediums we have discussed this semester, I often like to think about how each portrays the “truth” of something or someone. With Facebook, I always have trouble deciding if it accurately depicts a person or not. I mostly feel that it reduces people to a computer screen layout, listing their interests, publicizing conversations, and displaying the only most attractive pictures of people. Sometimes it seems as though people construct caricatures out of themselves on Facebook.
However, as many have already discussed, Miller argues that the users define what Facebook is about and that it is not fair to pin it down as totally truthful or not: it depends on how we use the medium to reflect ourselves. Vishula counters my ideas about Facebook well. Vishula does not use Facebook in a malicious or manipulative way: she says she used it when “wasn’t feeling bright” and “could have called a million people and tell them why I felt uncomfortable but I didn’t do that. I put it on Facebook, and then people commented.” Vishula is honest with herself and why she uses Facebook. I really admired her for being that transparent about its effect on her. I feel many people here at Hopkins are reluctant to admit how much they use Facebook or why – at least of the people I have talked to.
Miller discusses further the many truths that Facebook mediates- intentional, unintentional, and constructed. It was interesting to me to separate them out that way. I think that there can be a lot of overlap between the three categories. For example, a status that someone posts fully “intentional” to reveal some truth can be constructed in a way to make it witty or pleasing to the Facebook community. It is still a truth – intended to be shared within a community but constructed or influenced by the publicity of the internet and possibility of looming judgment or criticism. I think the publicity of Facebook is what makes me question the truthfulness of in the first place, since I know that I do not portray myself in the same way as I would if only my close friends saw my profile. For others such as Vishula, switching privacy setting or defriending might have no effect on the way she uses Facebook. What elements of Facebook’s social environment do you find intriguing –like the publicity, different mediums of communication within a medium, photo sharing, friending, defriending, etc?
Vishala’s case study is the perfect example of the politics of representation we have discussed throughout this course. Vishala explains, “Facebook is in itself more truthful as an encounter with people” (48). Is this necessarily true? As the lead poster explained, a person with a Facebook account is able to craft his or her own identity. Tagging pictures, untagging pictures, and deleting comments all exist to shape your user profile. This is a great example of the politics of representation. In choosing to block my pictures from all but a few, I am choosing to represent myself in a much more limited manner. Only my profile pictures are viewable by all of my “friends” – pictures I admittedly like the most of myself. As I mentioned on the Facebook class forum this week, an interesting feature of Facebook regarding the politics of representation comes in the form of security settings. There is a feature in which one can type in the name of any friend and see one’s profile through that person’s eyes. That person can then edit his or her settings to change the way he or she is represented to one specific person. This goes hand in hand with the concept of interpretation. As many people have mentioned, people can misinterpret comments, pictures, and intentions leading to a misrepresentation of the truth. In this way, I think Facebook is not more truthful. Regardless of cultural differences – me being American, the case studies in the book being all foreigners – the security settings and options are the same. Putting forward “the best version” of oneself is not necessarily a bad thing – it is just not necessarily the truth, let alone “more truthful”. Facebook “politics” cannot only lead to a distortion of the truth, but also a manipulation of it. In this way, I think Facebook is one of the most interesting forms of media in which politics of representation is prominent.
Zach mentions that Aaron “uses facebook mainly to communicate after school”, but what I found interesting about the chapter on Aaron is the use of facebook to provide a ‘time suck’ (the name of the chapter in fact), to whittle away the hours, which I alluded to during the lecture on facebook. Dennis Miller delineates three forms of ‘time suck’, including online gaming, cultivating one’s profile, and as Zach mentioned, communication. On the page forum, I said: “I'm sure we all have the experience of going to wikipedia to look up a particular subject or concept, and find ourselves after an hour with 10 tabs open looking at a wikipedia page that has nothing to do with what we intended to look up in the first place. It is this sort of freedom of distraction and digression that is unique to the online experience in contrast with the experience of media such as books or newspapers.” I believe that the form of ‘time suck’ that I refer to in my post is more in the vein of finding interesting links that contain interesting information, and which in turn link to more fascinating facts.
Where do you believe this type of time sink fits into Miller’s three forms of time suck? Are these three types of time sinks specific to facebook use, or can they be generalized to other domains of internet use? I also find it interesting that Miller specifically points out that Aaron is not spending so many hours online as a result of distraction or procrastination: “To the outside observer, this just seems mind-numbingly tedious … but for Aaron, this attention to detail and constant updating is not a distraction, or an entertainment that takes him away from things that matter … these were skills that would lead him to become successful and confident with other people, or despondent and unattractive, key social skills that could make the difference between a happy life and an unhappy one” (87). Miller paints the use of facebook not as a diversion, but as an essential undertaking for social success later in life. Is it possible for something that can be considered a ‘time suck’ to in fact be training an important life skill? Can you think of any examples outside of the sphere of facebook?
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