“Why haven’t you
liked my status yet?!” is the question one of my roommates once asked me. I
replied with something along the line of “Maybe because I was there and liking
it would be stupid.” This day and age many Social networking users are self
conscious about their “Facebook popularity”. Similarities can be seen in other
social networking sites such as Twitter, where people try desperately to grasp
some more followers. This all raises a few questions that I have been pondering
the last couple of days “Are we
taking these social networking sites too seriously and is it causing us to
overlook and forget what we truly have in real life? Lastly, are we doing too
much in trying to maintain a portrayal or personality that does not fully
represent ourselves”
We’ve
all done it before, some more subtle than others, but we have all posted
something that we hope would boost our popularity or “internet cred”. For example
the day I got my admission status, I immediately posted the status update based
on the infamous Lebron James quote “In this fall, this is very tough, in this
fall I'm going to take my talents to Norcal and join CAL.” In honest words the
main motivation for me to put up the post was to tell everyone how badass I
was…. no really. I’ve also seen friends untag themselves from photos because
the photo did not capture the “better looking” side of their face. In other
words sometimes what we see on Facebook is the BEST of that person and all the
flaws are hidden and scrapped away. Friend count is another tool people measure
how “popular” they are. For this reason I have always kept my friend count
hidden even though I’d say my friend count is above average. I’ve heard people
say “This is so embarrassing I only have x amount of friends” while others
complain that they have “too many” friends. According to Robin Dunbar’s
research the human brain can only keep about 150 meaningful relationships, so
in other words those 1000+ friends that you may have, close to 90% of those just
add to your statistic and do nothing else. (Dunbar’s research and more can be
found at http://www.npr.org/2011/06/04/136723316/dont-believe-facebook-you-only-have-150-friends).
Why
do we treat such a number such as the count of friends on Facebook so
seriously? Some people have the idea that the number of friends you have on
Facebook is directly related popularity. I surveyed a group of ten people in my
dorms and asked them the question “Do you think a person with 1000 Facebook
friends is more popular than a person with only 100 Facebook friends?” At
first, seven out of the ten people felt that the person with 1000 friends was
indeed more popular. I then proceeded to define popularity as “the state or condition of
being liked, admired, or supported by many people.” The responses after changed
dramatically with 8 people now saying that having 1000 friends on Facebook,
does not necessarily indicate a higher popularity level for the one with 100
friends. Just because someone’s daily activities online appear on your newsfeed
doesn’t make him or her a real friend. Real friends you have are the ones that
you constantly interact with in real life physically in other forms other than
a social virtual network. The problem today is that there are a lot of social
networking users that are consumed by the amount of friends they have. To
bring up an extreme case, just recently there was a double murder case involving
Enoch Potter Junior (suspect) and Billy Clay Payne, Jr. and Billie Jean
Hayworth (victims). Apparently Billy Clay and Billie Jean both defriended
Jenelle Potter, and thus causing her father Enoch Potter to kill the two couple
Billy Clay and Billie Jean (The link to the article for those who want to read
more about it is http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/marvin-potter-kills-couple-over-facebook-feud_n_1263967.html).
Seriously? Killing someone because he or she defriended your daughter?
Besides
building fake godlike images of people, social networking sites can also do the
opposite by creating fake negative facades of its users. I recently watched a movie
called Cyberbully as it tells the
story of a teenager and her ordeal with cyber bullies that sculpt a vulgar
reputation for the teen through hateful comments and nasty rumors. The teen’s
peers at school saw her as the person on Facebook and not for who she really
was, and eventually she attempted suicide as she herself began to believe that
she was the person the social network made her out to be. The plot of the movie
was indeed made up, but the issues that the movie calls attention to, are all
very valid. I am quite sure the movie was based on the true story of Megan Meir
in which she hung herself over a made up boy by the name of Josh Evans. The
person behind the Josh Evans identity was Lori Drew, who was a mother of a
former friend of Megan. Lori Drew’s daughter had a fallout with Megan Meier,
and to get revenge Lori decided to come up with this hoax that would eventually
lead to Megan’s death (Megan’s story can be read here http://www.meganmeierfoundation.org/megansStory.php
). Even though Megan had never met or seen this Josh Evans in person, she was
willing to die for him. What’s even worse was that she died for a person that
never even existed.
The examples I
have pointed out are all pretty extreme, but bringing the topic more into
perspective we are all susceptible to the stress and annoyances of maintaining
our persona on Facebook. The movie “Surrogates” is a perfect example of what I
fear, when people live their lives as real life surrogates. For example one
scene one user had a 5’11’’ athletic build surrogate, but in real life he was a
fat, bald, and obnoxious person. He would spend so much time to maintain his
surrogate, but in turn he lost perspective of his true self. Users these days
are putting way too much effort and time onto their “virtual image”, and some
may even deem it more important than their reputation in the real world.
Remember that on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
Cartoon by Steiner of the New Yorker
