Much fun has been made of social networks and the proliferation of web-based interaction. OurPrerogative brought to our attention an article by social critic Cory Doctorow that suggests a downside to the evolution of digital social networks:
“For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there’s a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I’d cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, “Am I your friend?” yes or no, this instant, please.”
As a recent convert to Facebook (thanks Amy) I would definitely argue for its significance as a step up from the overloaded ox wagon that has become Myspace, and the fun younger sibling to LinkedIn‘s strictly business-minded approach. Facebook’s minimalist interface mixed with user-made applications have turned it into a whimsical but structured rolodex. You can keep track of friends easily, and enable them to keep track of you. Some might say if you’re under 30, live in the US, and DON’T belong to a social network you might not even exist.
But Doctorow suggests the ills of social networks may outweigh the benefits. Membership in Facebook increases the threat to your public image by allowing your contacts to virtually compare notes – see pictures of you, comments about you, comments you have made about others – which you would not share with everyone in the real world. You also open yourself up to a phenomenon of passive-aggressive “friending,” inviting losers, ex-flames, distant friends and others you rarely if ever talk to in person to get all up in yo’ bizness.
The risk to privacy is one thing – one might suggest that as digital social networks grow and converge with real life, privacy is less under attack and more out-of-style. A casually managed transparency is as de rigueur on the web as tactical honesty is in the real world.
Just as interesting though are the notions of the change in the rules of friendship.
Christine Rosen refers to social networks as
surrogates for live relationships. But what happens when the surrogate replaces the norm?
Certainly the online world isn’t without threats (
e.g.). But these threats have more to do with trying to live out online relationships in the real world than with the online world itself.
Meanwhile, Rosen acknowledges that the leap to digital friendship is less a random phenomenon and more a convenient reaction to real world threats – emotional vulnerability, relationship violence, etc. If we really view this vulnerability as a threat – as early hominids might have viewed the sabertooth tiger – migration to the web could be a sensible evolution in interaction. And possibly inevitable.
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