Don't dis me cause I got 'Friends'

Facebook "friends" - bringing a whole new 20th century meaning to "faking it"!

Actually I don't think it's like this at all. This blog post parallels that written by Rachael. The problem stems from Facebook itself having chosen such a simplified singular wording - friends - to represent this folder in which are stored all of your contacts. These contacts could have been added for any number of reasons as people's purposes for using Facebook differ, and the nature of their contacts differs likewise.

Rather significantly I feel, 'Friends' on Facebook are more fluid than friends in 'real life'. Those who you choose to associate regularly with can change depending on your current situation - what part of the world you are living, what career change you just made, right down to what lectures you are actually attending! At the same time, circumstances can just as much bring past friends back together. Facebook and social networking sites facilitate this fluidity extremely well.

Secondly, once a contact has been added, it is highly unlikely that you would ever delete them. Therefore, those who were close contacts whom for whatever reason are no longer so, are likely to remain in your "contacts" list forever. It is only inevitable that over time, people's "Friends" are going to grow so as to be a misrepresentation of their actual status. Unless, Facebook limited the number of 'Friends' significantly from the current 5000 limit then people will not need to adjust their friends list accordingly.

However, care should be taken not to dis those who have a large number of Facebook 'friends'. The reality is that, just because one has added a contact in Facebook which inevitably will be added to a folder called "Friends" does not mean that this Facebook determined term is suitable for all of ones contacts. Additionally, it means that the 150 friends study IS compatible with somebody who has a total number of contacts far in excess of that as the fluid nature of friendships in modern society becomes a significant factor.

Ah, the days of Bebo...

The Week 4 lecture on identity made me think back to the days of Bebo (a social networking site for those who don’t know). Yes! I had a Bebo page once. In fact, i believe it’s still there *quickly checks* sure enough it is. It made me think about why i liked that social networking site (SNS) so much and i realised ...i liked it because i could be anyone or anything i liked. I could create a fluid identity and play around with it as i pleased. I found myself constantly communicating with people of different races, personalities and beliefs ...and in every instance i became different too, a chameleon if you like, who would take on the very same personality and beliefs (temporal convergence). And that made me or atleast my online identity, more acceptable (prestige). I found that some of the personalities and beliefs that i liked so much became a part of me permanently (saturated self), as if i was some kind of jig-saw puzzle of different beings (weird). Trust me; if you met me before i ever heard of an SNS then you would think I’d been living in a cave or something. I was so bland, like a blank piece of paper. And then all of a sudden people started writing, imprinting themselves on me and making me who i am today. This is why i believe SNS are so popular these days. You can communicate without having to be yourself. You can be all that you can be. And now that we have FaceBook ...well, just look me up and you’ll see what i mean. My online name? Superman =)

Meme Girls

Everyone is kind of the same online.

Ok, maybe not everyone is the same online, but I've noticed a lot of YouTubers are. They're all the same mixture of neurosis, geekiness and dry wit.

This kind of persona is a way we conform on the internet. Conforming is performing identity.

It could be argued that the videos I linked to above are designed to be personable, to draw people in; after all, both communitychannel and charlieissocoollike (whose videos are embedded above) are YouTube Partners, which means they make money from every view they get. This is a valid point. However, it could also be argued that most (if not all) identities are designed to draw people in. Humans are social creatures by nature. Even the most introverted of introverts will have some very close human connections.

Memes are another great example of our social nature. There are no clear benefits from propagating a meme, yet they spread like wildfire.

Memes are a way of letting people know that we get it. That we're in on the joke. That, yes, we find the same things funny, and, oh, I've seen Mean Girls too, it's hilarious. In this way, I think identity (on and offline) is very much a performance. There is a persona we put on for the internet: it's the one that strives to be quirkily intelligent, coming slightly out of left field, but still accessible to your every-person. It's the one which reminds me of those posters for "indie" movies, you know the sort: the ones with that hand-drawn font thing going on.

In short, everyone becomes a little bit like Tina Fey.

Is it a coincidence that there are so many Mean Girls memes floating around on the internet?

Girls vs. Guys @ Gaming - Is it fair to talk about?

So, apparently men are far more likely to be willing to dedicate hours on end towards acquiring the skills to enable them to successfully compete in complex online strategy games...compared to girls, who incidentally just want to feed a virtual dog and post an update of its well-being every hour.

Now, surely in the 21st century you all find this type of comment that devalues the efforts of women in our society completely offensive and down right unnecessary - right? We shouldn't be putting women down when it is so clearly not their fault - when it is merely a reflection on the way society has always been. Since time immemorial, the woman's role has been confined to washing, cooking and having a baby now and then; it is the man who was given the more complex role in life having been dealt the 'sole responsibility for his family's survival' card. In his effort to satisfy societies expectations of him - tilling the fields everyday to ensure the daily bread, trying to maintain friendships with other men whilst also trying to be more successful than them, constantly negotiating the line between strong bloke/ sensitive husband etc, he has been given the upper hand in developing the necessary skills and patience to allow him to do better than a women could at complex online games.

Men, be aware however. As Judith Butler says, gender is performative and new media has given women the perfect vehicle through which to mask their identity and adapt their performance to enable them to compete in the masculine domain of both real and online societies. Though it may not be happening immediately, these experiences that new media affords them will only aid, through opportunity, in educating women on masculine roles. The result - a new dominant woman figure able to match it with and defeat man at complex online games *big gasp* ... oh, and in every other facet of society as well by the way... muhuhahahaha

Let's face(book) it...

I live a parallel virtual reality. One, that I'm ashamed to admit, I've been sucked into so deeply it feels like I'll never be able to get out it. What started out as fodder for some sort of vague amusement and peaked as my guilty pleasure, has completed its dreaded cycle and ended now as an obsessive addiction - both the bane and basis of my e-existence. And I'm both ashamed and glad to say that I'm not alone.

In all honesty, the last thing we needed was another platform to form our identities, market ourselves and make friends - trust me, real life is enough (Ask anyone who's ever been through adolescence and they'll vouch for this). Yet it appears that almost every regular Facebook user works hard to try and create and then sustain their online identity - so that it is always an apt indication of who they really are. Which then begs the question who are they, really? In some cruel twist of fate, it appears that the roles have become reversed, and grossly so. Ever heard a comment like "that is SO going on facebook" or "omg new profile pic!" after taking a photo? Sounds all too familiar? Yeah, I had a feeling. It’s almost scary how determined we all are to cement and sustain our online personas as an apparent extension of our real life ones. But that isn’t necessarily how it plays out. Instead, what we we’re actually doing is changing and shaping our online identities into the way we want to be perceived and then attempting to recreate and reflect that in our daily ‘real’ existence.

We've come to manipulate and alter our social existence to feed our other virtual one. So is our Facebook profile really a reflection of who we are? Or do we strive instead in real life to live up to some distorted definition we've created of ourselves?

I don't know about the rest of us...but Mark Zuckerberg, you have created a monster.