The Philosophy of Social Networking Pt1
Posted: July 9, 2010 Filed under: Culture, Debate, Philosophy Friday, Technology | Tags: Facebook, Flickr, Follow me on Twitter, individual, Lie, Myspace, online, Philosophy, popularity, pride, promoting, promotion, Social Networking 16 Comments »
Welcome to Philosophy Friday, a new series examining “general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.” (Wikipedia definition)
A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine posted the following Facebook status…
“I hate you Facebook, you offer so much but deliver so little, when will you learn Facebook, no-one likes you, they’re just using you.”
I think there’s a lot of truth in those words. The first section in paticular grabbed my attention. “You offer so much but deliver so little.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Flickr etc) has been lying to us.
The Lie
What is the lie that social media tells us? What does it claim to offer but fail to deliver? There’s probably lots of little lies. But THE lie is this: “You are important, you are significant, and I [social media] can make people realise that.”
Before you all stop reading, let me explain what I mean. Social media is built on the individual. You can claim it creates ‘community’ and ‘networking’, but really that’s just one of the offers Facebook (and others) fail to deliver on. Social media has yet to prove it can create anything like a meaningful community.
Because social media is about me, it plays on my pride and screams ‘you are important, so go ahead and promote yourself’. Social media is not about other people. It’s all about me. It plays on my pride.
Proving the Point
Think of it this way…I can’t remember the last time anyone tweeted an apology. I certainly haven’t. You don’t use Twitter or Facebook to apologise. You use it to promote yourself.
Or what about use of pictures? We don’t post bad pictures of ourselves. We un-tag ourselves from embarrasing photos. We select the picture we are most proud of for our profile pictures. We use pictures to promote ourselves.
What about the Facebook biography? You don’t write about your bad habits, mistakes or failures. You say how wonderful you are. When was the last time one of your friends blogged something negative about themseves? Blogging isn’t about being honest. It’s about promoting yourself.
How do you promote yourself? You put up all the pictures from your holiday to make your friends jealous, you post overly emotional statuses in the hope that someone will comment and give you all that attention that “you so deserve”. (Again social media plays on pride). Or perhaps it’s as simple as falling into that age old trap of popularity.
It’s true, we all know some people fall into the trap of judging their own self-importance on how many Facebook friends, or followers [Twitter] they have. It’s easy to feel sorry for such people. But examine yourself. Can I honestly say my confidence and self esteem wouldn’t take a knock if a couple of hundred Facebook friends deleted me overnight?
The Truth
Deep down we all know the truth. The truth is we are each important, significant and valued beyond our mere appearence, background and experiences. Our true friends value us regardless of what appears on our profile page. There’s no need to be full of pride and seek to constantly promote ourselves online or offline.
Don’t believe the lie.
***I realise this post has been very critical of social media. But before you delete your facebook page and live in seclusion from the world…I’d like to point out social media has many benefits. Future blog posts on the subject will most likely be much more positive. The aim has been to create a debate. I welcome your comments…
“Can I honestly say my confidence and self esteem wouldn’t take a knock if a couple of hundred Facebook friends deleted me overnight?”
So true.
I make an effort to not make friends with people I don’t know. Sure, there are a couple I’ve never really met, but I’ve known them online for a long time. And There are also 1 or 2 that I’ve never met, and never really known, but just happen to find interesting.
But yeah…if I lost my apparently pitiful (to some strange people) “friends” on Facebook, I think my self confidence would diminish more than it ever has.
Whilst I disagree that NO apologies have ever been posted, or demeaning biographies, etc, I’d agree that they’re certainly a rare occurance.
I’ll admit now that I mostly use Facebook and Twitter to either promote my interests, or something relevant to me, a friend, or a relative.
I have posted apologies, and my biography used to say “I’m not really that great” before I posted a link to my blog (More self promotion!), but they’re not so often as “I” this and “Me” that.
So yeah…this is why I’ve always prefered an open forum to a “social networking” site.
I could probably say more, but it’d just be me agreeing with most of what you’ve said. Though I’ll happily point out that I rarely untag myself, and I rarely try and flaunt myself on Facebook and Twitter through photographs…I hate the way I look.
I am not going to lie, I actually use it to promote myself.
Go onto my blog http://www.milanmatejka.blogspot.com =D
But as well as that, there are positives but I believe Sam will show them.
Carry on Sam!
Great blog Sam.Yr not the 1st and you won’t be the last to notice the lies within this ‘cyber-community’ thing.I personally believe that our adversary is working towards mass seclusion and self-sufficiency,2 things that are being acheived through the social networking explosion.People do not need to actually interact in person with eachother anymore.They can sucessfully live their lives within their 4 walled prisons in preparation for a future eternity of seclusion.And of course the whole idea of self-sufficiency means there is no need of a trusting relationship with any form of God.Again that pride thing is there . . . possibly the 1st sin on record.
“I hate you Facebook, you offer so much but deliver so little, when will you learn Facebook, no-one likes you, they’re just using you.”
Facebook is a program and like any other database-driven application it can fulfil its purpose if it is used effectively: If you don’t add your friends; it will deliver little. If you don’t use it to start conversation by exploiting the comment capabilities; it will deliver little.
Face Book is like a blank canvas: The content won’t appear on it’s own.
People use Face Book in different ways; most of these allow their Face Book to convey their individual personality. Certainly some people may be constantly posting pictures of their latest holidays, or their biceps, to show off, but (as in real life) this will be instantly noticeable. Everyone can be big-headed at times, it is the individuals that do it consistently that get irritating.
Face Book allows you to express yourself whenever you feel the need/want to, I don’t think in allowing us this freedom it is lying to us by implying that “we are more important than we actually are”… That is like saying “because you can talk and be ignored, your cause/creator (evolution/God) is lying to you. You are not important.” As an atheist, I find freedom in the personal knowledge that nothing is important; the world could explode today and it wouldn’t matter because (in my personal opinion) when we die, we won’t remember anything, for we will lack a brain capable of memory. This view is, from personal experience, a great reliever of stress.
The video I mentioned the other day you can find here: http://apps.facebook.com/feightlive/
I think this is a very interesting prospect you could blog about; Face Book becoming the ‘Microsoft’ of internet socialisation – something of a monopolist.
Websites such as Pandora and many others are using Face Book to provide users the capacity to log in and share their Face Book information with the website for a personalised experience.
If what this video speaks of is allowed to continue unchallenged for too long, we will find Face Book at the centre of the internet; A dangerous prospect especially for a proprietary website IMHO.
Other than his annoying spelling of Facebook, I completely agree with Samuel Ames. Facebook is what you make of it. Stop blaming it for your own friends inability to function as normal people!
“We dont… See more’t post bad pictures of ourselves. We un-tag ourselves from embarrasing photos… We select the picture we are most proud of for our profile pictures. ..You say how wonderful you are… you post overly emotional statuses..”
Speak for yourself? I dont think I’m guilty of any of these and neither are (most) of my friends. I think your experience with Facebook might be coloured by the fact you have over 700 friends; at least 300 more than anyone else I know!
Facebook is a tool. It’s not Facebook’s fault if you can’t create a community because you add people like those you describe. Any website is only as good as the people on it, and on Facebook, you are the person that chooses the people on it.
I have a rule. My Facebook friends are either 1. People I know well in real life (family, good friends) or 2. People I share an instituational connection with (you, zom, my pr classmates). Old school friends, people I met at parties, people who share interests or political views are not Facebook adds.
Using that rule, and Facebook Lite, I have a generally good experience with the site.
Thank you all for your comments. It seems the majority agree with my points but I also welcome Sam and Rob’s contribution. I’ll try and clarify a few things.
I admit it’s easy to view this post as if I’m attacking Facebook itself. But really I’m commenting on how the majority (and I do believe it’s the majority) of people use Facebook to promote themselves. This may be in a big way (“Everyone look at my bloggg!”) or in a small way (bending the truth on your education and work section like some people do on CVs)
So I agree Sam and Rob- it’s a “blank canvas”, it’s a “tool”. A hammer can be used to kill someone or to fix something. Facebook can be used for shameless self promotion or for keeping in touch with friends. In truth, I think we all do a bit of both.
Rob- I wasn’t blaming Facebook. I wasn’t even blaming people who use Facebook to promote themselves. I was merely commenting that’s what some people choose to do.
Regarding ‘community’ i”m cynical about any online ‘community’ because I don’t believe ‘virtual/online communities’ are communities in the true sense of the word at all. So it’s not about who I have or haven’t added. It’s just I don’t think online communities will ever rival “real life” communities. (But I’ll save all that for another blog post maybe!)
I can’t help but feel you are also having a ‘dig’ at me regarding how many facebook friends I have. So although it’s beside the point- of the 726 friends I have, I have met ALL of them bar about 5% who I need to know for work related stuff.
I’d also like to point you all to my final words where I recognise Facebook has a huge potential for good and that is what future posts will most likely deal with.
Really interesting viewpoint of social media! I really like this post
If you look at my bio on Facebook I’m pretty sure I talk about my bad habits though
and true, my Twitter is to promote myself, but more these days to promote my music as well…
But overall I really liked this blog entry. Nice one, Sam
Thanks Kat!
I’m not having a dig at your amount of friends, I’m suggesting that your opinion of Facebook is coloured by the way you use it, which may not be the experience of many. Facebook reports the average user has 130 friends. You have nearly six times the average amount of friends, and whether or not you know each well, the system cannot reasonably keep up with that, so you’re going to reduce it to noise.
I have 73 friends, many of whom are older family members who barely even use Facebook, and yet I still often have an entire ‘page’ of results on the front page every time I ignore the site for more than half a day. That’s using Facebook Lite, which filters out the things I don’t like about Facebook, like social games, applications and all the other non-communicative stuff. With ten times that, I can’t imagine it’s easy to keep up and I’m not surprised you reduce the whole thing to its lowest common denominator.
As for your argument of not blaming social media or people, your language in the original post seems to strongly contradict this:
“What is the lie that social media tells us? What does it claim to offer but fail to deliver?”
If you use strong language that directly attacks a medium, I will respond to the argument in kind. If your point is that actually, social media tells us nothing but some people choose to use it in a way that you think it’s counterproductive, you are correct, and need to phrase it as such. Blaming social media for lying is not doing that, and a paragraph at the bottom saying that actually you like social media doesn’t really change that.
You’ve created your own straw man, here. If you log out and check how Facebook represents itself, it only says “keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” And “Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”
It delivers on all of these, in my experience. It does make the world more connected, and it can make the world more open, depending on how you choose to use it. It was initially designed to allow American college students to keep in touch with old friends. It’s not trying to replace real community or usurp real life communication, that’s just how you see it. There’s no ‘lie’ there.
This is all assuming that self-promotion isn’t a big part of the real world, either. It’s more obvious on Facebook and nobody carries a sign with them saying ‘I’m really awesome’ or ‘Look at my website!’ all day, but just because it’s more subtle doesn’t mean it’s non-existent. The clothes we choose to wear, the make-up we put on, the way we handle ourselves, what we choose to say and what we leave out, how we describe out past experiences, and the friends we choose could all be considered a form of self-promotion.
The real world isn’t free from this by a long way, so why would you expect a site that distils social functions to their most basic to be any different? I disagree about virtual communities, but you are right, that’s another argument. The argument your original post establishes is ”social media lies to us about what it offers”. I merely put forward the idea that you have taken it upon yourself to compare Facebook to something it’s not really meant to be compared to, and then slammed it because it can’t live up to these personal expectations.
I’m suprised you took my ‘strong language’ so seriously. I think everyone else took it as my exaggeration to prove a point. atleast I hope they did…!
Of course Facebook doens’t literally lie to the public! This post has a lot of hyperbole in it for sure. But I thought people kinda “got” that. If you read this post very literally and seriously as you have done, then i’m not suprised your accusing me of building a straw man.
I agree self promotion is part of our culture outside of the web. this post was designed to show people how it’s also a big part of how we live our lives online.
I agree with many of the points above. In just the same way that a glass cannot be held responsible for the quality of wine it holds, so Facebook itself cannot be held accountable for the merit of its contents. And it’s just as well, since a great deal of what is to be discovered there is completely indistinguishable from the contents of a sewage canal. If I ever require an antidote to my natural humanism, and if I desire to indulge in misanthropy, I make sure to pay Facebook a swift visit.
im gay
Oh dear. It’s nice to have “friends” with such sharp sense of humour…
You know you can delete that comment if it wasn’t from you?
Really? How do I acomplish that?
hmm ok I’m wrong…I’ll look into adding that feature. But I can delete it for you if you want?