As we are now traveling in Mexico, I can assure you that the internet has made the practicalities of life much easier. You not only can buy airline tickets online, but in Mexico, at least, you can buy bus tickets online as well (buses being essential travel in Mexico) and even many van and taxis services in more remote places. Almost everyone has some kind of wi-fi service here (even if some servers are slow and unpredictable). You can stay in touch with family and friends via "Vonage Talk" or "Skype" or, for Americans, via some small USB connector telephone device -- all with very little cost to the user.
But in regard to the way we appear to others, the evolution of the internet has taken some peculiar twists, in my humble opinion. (It must be humble because despite being an early user of computers -- from main frame computers in the 1970s to laptops today -- I am NOT, and never can be, part of a cybernetic culture, simply as a consequence of my age and the pre-cybernetic culture that formed my character). The internet has changed discourse, as many people smarter than I have observed. It has supposedly created new "communities," which, if you stretch the definition of community to its breaking point, one might grudgingly admit. But it has also accentuated the most powerful drive among individuals for autonomy, agency, and authority. In everyone's quest to present themselves as they would wish to be seen, it has also become a vehicle of egoism (and sometimes narcissism and exhibitionism).
Not long ago, I enjoyed sending and receiving e-mails. While not examples of the best writing, e-mails allowed me to send information and ideas and so on to my family and friends, and to receive e-mails, in a private way. Today, I seldom receive personal e-mails, except tiresome marketing ones from my "friends" at Amazon and VRBO and Expedia and Eddie Bauer. Sometimes folks write a short note to me, sometimes with accompanying pictures, etc., but e-mail as an important internet method for anything other than formal business is as dead as the proverbial dodo. The death of personal letters, and now the death of personal e-mails, might be seen as the death of the paragraph and narrative communication in everyday life.
Most of my family and friends are now members of "Facebook," or some like service. This seemed great at the start, and still is in some ways. You could see how everyone was doing at a glance, including what was on their mind, and how their lives were unfolding daily. You could post your whereabouts, the progress of your work, your very, very latest opinion on politics, links to interesting sites, causes you cared about, etc.
Then it gradually changed (well, hell, gradually in cybernetic time). In my case, my family actually seldom uses it (except for outgoing mail from my wife and me), despite my having signed my sons on as "friends" and now as "family" ("Facebook has now started encouraging you to categorize folks in a certain way, to compartmentalize your discussion of yourself and with others in the framework they want to lay out). But now I may ditch the whole thing, if one can do that; I understand that no one ever really "leaves" "Facebook"; apparently "Facebook" is much harder to remove than a tattoo. I am getting uneasy as well as unsatisfied.
Before the "Facebook" people sue me for defamation, let me say that their service, with all of its bells and whistles (comments to post, walls to write on, messages to send, photos to mount, notifications to peruse, etc., etc.) is something I have readily embraced. Now, however, using "Facebook," even opening it up, is beginning to creep me out. Here are the reasons.
1. Logging into "Facebook" makes me feel like a voyeur. No, I take that back, it literally makes me a voyeur. Before going on, I need to admit that the idea of this blog came from a truly voyeuristic experience we had last week. While lolling away our lives on a small beach in the state of Oaxaca, a group of young people (mid-20s?) arrived. One of them was a woman who enjoyed being topless. Well, I should correct that by saying she enjoyed being topless in front of the rest of us. (Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't object, nor did the other men there). Her exhibitionism -- in the surf, doing exercises on the beach, getting a tan -- was transparently directed at the rest of us -- the audience. Yet, if it were not for a few things she said, that we happened to overhear, we actually would have known little about her; the human anatomy is, after all, a lot more universal, and in most ways, less individually revealing than we often admit. So, in fact, this young woman actually exposed far less of herself by being nude than by identifying herself as a self-centered exhibitionist. In an odd sort of way, the presentation of self on "Facebook" is just as revealing, and revealing to more eyes.
Despite the fact that I have very narrowly restricted my "friends" list, it is obvious when I read my friends' postings that I am observing a great deal -- maybe a great deal too much -- about their daily lives. But that, as you all know, is only the tip of the iceberg. Most importantly, your "friends" have other "friends," completely unknown to you, who comment on your friends' "statuses." ("Facebook," as you all know, likes words like "status" -- ingenuously twisting the word "status," with its implication of gravity and centeredness, into meaning something enormously fluid -- something moment to moment -- not something permanent and anchored). You see some intimate comments from those friends and, of course, when you make a comment about those, hundreds of pesons you do not know can read that comment as well. It is an incredible and interesting irony, I believe, that generations younger than mine are outspoken on behalf of their "right" to privacy yet they willingly expose much about themselves through "Facebook."
2. "Facebook" culture has made us all a little more egotistic, at best. OK, I am basing this on the example of one person -- me. We seek out those who will be our "friends," taking comfort and cheer when people agree to be our "friend." Some, well, very many according to what I have heard, collect as many "friends" as possible in some kind of egoistic frenzy. It is all very reminiscent of Valentine's Day in 5th grade. We then post something, and are disappointed if no one comments. We comment on others posts, and are disappointed if no one comments on the comment. We publish a profile with clever or ironic photos of ourselves. We put pictures on "Facebook," often to draw attention to our lives and how we are living them. And, I fear, some people may be actually transferring their egos entirely to "Facebook" as the medium to display their lives. In this regard, it is informative to look at Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, a work published sixty years ago. His brilliant discussion of how we dramatize and represent ourselves in front of different audiences could well be applied to our presentation of ourselves on the internet. I hope some scholar will take up applying his theories to things like "Facebook."
3. Our use of "Facebook" may diminish our capacity to communicate well and to be part of a real community. It does not necessarily lead to this, of course, but the one-sentence-culture of "Facebook" seems more like passing notes to one another in 7th grade (only doing it now in a manner so that ALL of the classes in the school can see it; intimacy shared -- that is, exhibitionism). The recent rise of "twittering" seems a further extension of this mode of "discussion" and "comment." "Twittering" is simply gossiping. And, from what I have read, "twittering" occurs at something like the junior high school level of discourse, moral conduct, and linguistic elegance as well. The difference with "twittering" is that it seems to be a status thing; just which important people will listen to you "twitter" (i.e., which important kids in school will listen and talk to you); who can you get to respond to your "twitter," and so on.
Altogether, there is little sustained expression or argumentation in using "Facebook" to "communicate." One reason I started to blog (is that a verb?) was as an antidote to having no other way anymore to communicate thoughts and reflections to other people (although, admittedly, I have no idea whether there is anyone reading these or not, despite my having installed a "status counter"; perhaps this makes blogging just a form of intellectual masturbation. It probably is; for now, I will not go there).
Having been so critical and condemnatory, I must say again that I, as readily as most, like to go to "Facebook" to see how my real friends and family are getting along. But I remain wary -- very wary -- and suspect that I, along with my family and friends, may be stepping over too many lines (as I argue above) in using "Facebook." In the end, I suspect we all communicate with those who matter to us through more intimate and private means -- the telephone, e-mail perhaps, letters, cards, "Skype," and, above all, through face-to-face engagement.
Hey, if you liked this blog, push the "like" button, or leave a comment on the link below, or send my blog link on to a "friend," or send me a picture, or . . . . ; - )
1 comment:
Jim, I have so many mixed feelings reading this (and that probably is reflected in mixed thoughts too). I recognize the problems you identify and yet there is so much I like about the 'community' it creates I can't imagine leaving it. But for a truer indication of my confusion see my facebook status.
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