Subtitle: FARTBOOK is FARCEBOOK filled with FAECEBOOK
Many years ago I was an early adopter of, and immersed my Self in Myspace. It was new, it was exciting and slightly 'innocent', it was great to see that there were people like me out there – wherever in the world –with similar specialised interests. I also reconnected with long lost friends, it was socially reinforcing. As one example, I made friends in Italy of all places, they became close friends who I visited in person and their friends visited me (when holidaying in Australia). I discovered Italy and it’s culture, new music etc. It was an enriching experience.
But as more people joined, at some point it became fake, a dysfunctional ‘competition’ replaced the sense of community, for want of a better description. I started to live my life through the lens of my camera that I would take everywhere to record and upload my life for the ‘world’ (or 800 so-called ‘friends’) to see and comment on. I cosseted myself in a lifestyle of constant activity, busy-ness and Myspace became too big a distraction and time-vacuum. At first it was great lighthearted fun, but as others took up similar patterns I began to see an emerging dysfunctionality in these behaviors – that today has become extremely pronounced and is recognised as a social disease. 'Telling friends about it afterwards' became as big an incentive to go out as the opportunity to catch up with friends and/or the event itself. Besides, I communicated with my friends online, right? So I immediately stopped, even though (a) I have always loved photography (sparked by my grandfathers interest in it) and once considered it as a career and studied photography for a year and (b) I am by nature personable and like meeting new people, especially creatives which is my academic/work interest. Despite that I still share long personal emails with some of the friends I made worldwide – most of whom know me in real life and pay no attention to my online presence. And I do use subject specific social networks and some sites for experimentation/curiosity/for work. In the rare times when I do so I do it anonymously with pseudonyms. For example years ago I registered on linked in to explore it for work - I think on there I'm a call centre worker in India.
The key point of this blog entry is that there is a marked difference between social networking and social promotion (a nicer term than exhibitionism so let's use it). Simplistically, one is good and the other is bad.
When I used to take photos and upload them, it was not about me, it was a process I undertook that helped form a kind of friendship glue. Before uploading any photos that included other friends I would seek their permission first. I rarely photoshopped them, and initially would put a black box over everyone’s heads to protect their privacy. The process of us taking the photos would be a chance for us all to crowd together and hug, and those who didn’t want to be in the photo could opt out, and those who didn’t like the photo taken would tell me to delete it from the camera and I would as a courtesy as I value the esteem of my friends because as even blogger.com instructs "to upload photos of others without permission is bad manners". It was all funny fun and not serious at all.
Yesterday I was disturbed by a faecebook behavior that has led to the following rant. Some time ago I organised a night out amongst a few friends. I did so on the back of (a) wanting to gauge enthusiasm for a little new venture I’ve been trying to motivate friends to startup and (b) I’d been awarded my doctorate. A few days before the night one of these friends had visited and noted in my wardrobe a leopard print frock I used to wear ‘back in the day’ but no longer wear as I like to dress my age! She said I must wear it to our night out so I indulged her and put it on with little thought beyond a cringe and giggle (I’d spent most of the day running around town etc and so got ready at the last minute). I digress… we arrived to find a couple of friends and two people we didn’t know were already there. We were introduced to the 2 we didn’t know but one of them just stared and rarely spoke with us. From hereon in I'll refer to them as the Stepford singles, not wives because at least two of them are single and aged in their 40's. The three of them were not really up to conversation with us, preferring their enclave. They then commandeered the venue stereo and did some synchronised dancing, with their backs to us, facing other people in the venue. I then realised they weren’t actually interested in us as people or conversing per se. So I tried to kickstart a conversation but was met with blank faces. Blank. Then their cameras came out and they were suddenly highly animated and clicketty clicking themselves then deleting the ones they didn’t like and trying again. They put on their ‘wow’ faces – expressions of ‘wow I’m having a great time’. The fakeness of it all made my other friends and I uncomfortable. “lord what is going on” was muttered by one. I somehow made it obvious that this behavior was socially unacceptable. “Yes aren’t we vain” came the reply and the behavior continued. Another stepford single whipped out her mobile to twatter that she was oh so drunk on her 3rd cocktail etc etc. (she wasn’t). We left them to it and departed the venue quickly. I didn’t think we were in any of the photos and our permission wasn’t sought. It was all about them. I wrote off the disappointing night and days later I did a ‘take 2’ celebration with other friends that was fab.
I discovered yesterday that a photo that includes me taken by the third stepford single, who did not converse with us at all - just stared at us blankly, is on her faecebook page. I don’t know her, I’m not her friend and feel very uncomfortable about it and want it removed. But I don’t know her name and am not on fartbook so can’t contact her to issue a takedown notice. I don’t want to be associated with her – not because I dislike her, but because it’s fake, I don’t know her and she made no effort to converse with me. She literally just stared at me throughout the time we were there. The fakeness of it all disturbs me. Secondly, the Stepford singles were all scrupulously censoring their photos of themselves, rapidly deleting any that were deemed unflattering and perhaps even photoshopping them before uploading to their farcebook. However they did not, of course, edit any of the other people, or at best selectively. They look perfect, others look less so. But most importantly, they did not contact any of us to ask permission to use us as subjects in their photos. A friend has sent a copy of the photo I’m in to me, and it is NOT flattering, I was clearly caught in a bad moment. In fact it looks like I’m thinking ‘get me out of here’ as the flashes were constant and distracting from any ability to converse. I know another stepford single has done this in the past – made publicly available a photo of herself with friends where she looks ‘glowing’ but the others less so, without seeking their permission.
This form of social promotion is unhealthy. It had an element of female competition to it, it is NOT social networking, which is about meeting people and talking with them. It is not real life, trying to converse with them that night was arduous (and I have subsequently given up when I’ve seen them at the places to be seen). This form of what I call social promotion is vacuous and fake and has long term damaging effects (which I've written about before and posted an excerpt here). The more that a person participates in it, the more pressure they place upon themselves to maintain the fake wow bar they have set up high for themselves. As we saw on that fateful night, these people are not engaging in real social activities. It’s just self exhibitionism, self promotion. I advise they
- turn off all access to social networks, twatter and online communication for 2 months and get some reality back into their lives;
- allow their edifices some imperfection and originality;
- go out without a camera / ban use of their camera phone;
- seek to understand why they do it;
- accept that they are aged 40+ and need to stop behaving like 20 year old kids in mating markets. It’s unseemly; and
- -consider that perhaps noone actually pays attention to their online profile amongst the flood of other profiles (the 80/20 rule is probably closer to 99/1 rule on farcebook).
Speaking more broadly on a global scale there are changes afoot, with international ‘turn off faecebook’ day where people were encouraged to delete their social network accounts, universities are starting to ban social networks for periods. The ‘turn off’ and 'be real' movement may well become as strong as the slow cooking, slow living movement. I personally refuse to go near farcebook and my sister has adopted a mantra of ‘online exclusivity’ – she refuses to promote herself professionally and personally online in mass market sites– although her small business has a web page -she networks one-to-one online via emails. She’s all for the dignity of real life. I applaud that.
We see alarmist scenarios of how in the future a key occupation will be ‘personal brand manager’ – staff who ensure their client is represented appropriately to their brand online. This is a service not for stars, but for everyone, anyone, all 500 million fartbooks . I don’t have a big online presence anymore, the test phase is over and i learnt from it, but I sure would like to hire one of those brand managers to identify, locate and tell the stepford single to remove that photo of me. I believe increasingly ‘personal online exclusivity’ will become far more valuable than the detritus that is the washing machine of faecebook where everyone and their pet is perfectly mouthing “wow I’m special and lead an exciting life’ in their photos on their personal pages (less so in the photos of them that are on their friends pages….), whilst they continue to reference the totems of their tribes in a global group think “yes I lurve tiki, it’s so iconic blither blather blah blah.” I’ve heard it all before, there’s no originality in it. There’s no originality in the hairstyle that is copied from others, nor in the leopard print that 3 of us were dressed in that night. Original individual thought is exciting, not just repeating the group think that dares not diverge with an individual opinion. When I prodded a stepford single at an earlier event, I just got more blathering of token phrases that bored me. Brain is off. And the groupthink may not actually be what the individual likes, what the individual really personally likes. All up it equals LOW VALUE THOUGHT. By thinking and speaking honestly I will value you more.
As a postscript, I was recently taken to task by someone over the behavior of one of the stepford singles. It was really uncomfortable as I have no influence over her behavior but was considered somehow responsible by association (do you understand now my reaction to appearing in the photo of a stranger?). Regardless, I communicated directly, plainly and simply the message to the stepford single that she should stop leaving suggestive comments on the farcebook page of the man who made the complaint. In reply I got an emotional voicemail asking me to contact her. I won’t as I made my point plainly and by further discussion fear it will result in a catfight that will then be faecebooked. It's not my responsibility. And I want out and away from vanity robots. Their fantasy-land is my sci-fi horror.
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