Friendship As Media
More of my friends are finding the time to get on Facebook, prompting various nostalgia trips as people from the past reconnect. This seems benign enough, but it’s a little strange that the technological means makes possible a relationship that everyone involved in was happy enough to abandon to the mists of time. It’s like Facebook has more at stake in that revived connection than the individuals reconnecting do—and maybe that’s true.
Actually, this seems like the essential bargain Facebook presents us with. It will facilitate our illusions of friendship and connection by making such social contact nearly effortless and highly insulated. We can broadcast gossip about ourselves and present ourselves in a flattering light and make contact with people we had forgotten about just by going to the site. It maintains our friendships for us by storing a configuration of the network of all the people who have ever mattered to us while exempting us from that particular effort that we had already, in fact, stopped bothering to make.
So we get friendship without the trouble of having to put effort into the relationships. It’s friendship rendered convenient through technology, and the convenience to a degree denatures the original significance—isn’t the substance of relationships ultimately anchored in the effort we feel ourselves putting in? (Or am I simply mystifying the ideal of working at things?)
In exchange for making our social lives more convenient, Facebook seizes the right to transform our sociality into commercially useful information, turn our relationships into market research and use that data to anticipate and shape our future selves with the ads it calculates that we should be presented with. It manages our friendships and then processes the data interrelationships to guide the process of how we subsequently develop our identities through its site. Since it is mediating our friendships, and in effect making the effort for us, it is also directing what the fruits of that effort will be, supplying the framework through which friendships develop and making itself the very medium of friendship.
At that point, Facebook succeeds into making friendship a consumption product, and itself as the service provider. The other friends we have through it, on the other side the screen, are the product it marshals for us. And our consumption of Facebook, rather than the actual experience of friendship with all the effort that would otherwise require, now shapes our personalities—in accordance with the commercial goals it has set out for ourselves. In that way, it isolates us more by promising to mediate our connections with the rest of the world. It deprives us of the option to make more effort, and make our social efforts more meaningful. Is this too pessimistic?
Comments
Perhaps not pessimistic enough. This reminds me of <a href=“http://ask.metafilter.com/83444/Becoming-a-better-friend”>this Ask MeFi thread</a> about friendship from a while back that I found myself sort of shocked by, in the way that the consensus definition of friendship that the group settled on was, more or less: “A type of butler”. Which also seems to be closely related to friendship as a consumption product, right?
I feel like this attitude predates Facebook, which is not to say that Facebook does not also perpetuate it. But the self-esteem movement and attendant narcissism could also play a large role.
Comment by alsomike — November 21, 2008 @ 1:42 pm
Yeah, you are over-valuing “working at things”. Friendship is generated by spark; it’s magnetic and chemical as much as anything else.
Comment by MF from Portland, OR — November 21, 2008 @ 2:03 pm
Taking a (rather doctrinaire) dialectical view, I’d say that effort as an index of the degree of closeness one feels to one’s various friends would work only until such time as the making of the effort engenders the to my mind inevitable slew of sites and app.‘s devoted to making your effort less of an effort, thus creating an appearance of effort—simulated effort. The simulacrum will then once again triumphantly assert its preeminence.
Comment by J. Baudrillard from a position of unassailable certitude — November 22, 2008 @ 10:53 am
It’s really a disturbing fact that most people nowadays stay in front of laptops too much, rather than socializing with others, yes they socialize with other people through net but there is a big difference between reality and internet fantasies! sorry for the term*
Comment by Leutasch from italy — November 22, 2008 @ 8:44 pm
As an older person with a very young family I find Facebook to be a great way to keep in touch with family members and friends all over the world. We all have busy lives and I feel more connected with what is happening in their lives (and vice-versa) than I have in years. I’m years, if not decades, past the time when I could hang out a friend’s house or a bar for hours into the early morning. It has even made it possible to re-connect with old friends from the pre-internet days when it was much easier to lose track of someone. Just a thought.
Comment by Dlanod from Wisconsin — November 23, 2008 @ 8:33 pm
Facebook is excellent for keeping in touch with all people who a) you don’t want to keep in touch with or b) don’t want to keep in touch with you.
It is also useful for bringing out the stalker in all of us.
Comment by Greg from LA — November 23, 2008 @ 8:47 pm
Um, your site is called Marginal Utility. Doesn’t facebook effectively increase the marginal utility of maintaining casual friendships? I can keep in contact with 50 friends from past and present for the same effort it would have taken to maintain contact with just a few of them. This can only add to my enjoyment of friendship, as it increases my connection with people I care about (even if I only care about them enough to keep up with them on facebook).
The ads are basically unobtrusive, I think you’re being dramatic when you say that they “anticipate and shape my future self.”
I guess I just don’t see the downside.
Comment by Hannah from Texas — November 23, 2008 @ 9:13 pm
Mediating our friendships? Wow, that is a long reach. My family and friends are stretched from California to Germany and Michigan to Florida. I’ve lost touch with school friends that I haven’t been in contact with for decades. Facebook facilitates renewing old friendships and allows me to share with lots of old and new friends. You give the application way too much credit and power. It is a communication tool, that is all.
Comment by Jack — November 23, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
There is an aspect of Facebook where people you hardly knew 10 years ago feel compelled to add you to their friends list. But it’s also helped me reconnect with people that it turns out I actually do have an interest in knowing again, plus it’s great for keeping up with people that I do see in real life.
Of course, it’s particularly hard of me to think poorly of it because I met my boyfriend on Facebook. Sure, we were both both grad students at the same university, but we were in different programs and I was rarely on campus, so it’s unlikely we’d have ever run into each other if he hadn’t neatly categorized and cataloged himself on Facebook. We only messaged on-line for a little while before going out and realizing we got along great in person as well.
Comment by Paul from Kentucky — November 23, 2008 @ 11:14 pm
Rob, you wrote:
“So we get friendship without the trouble of having to put effort into the relationships. It’s friendship rendered convenient through technology, and the convenience to a degree denatures the original significance—isn’t the substance of relationships ultimately anchored in the effort we feel ourselves putting in?”
I truly don’t mean to be flippant, but this seems like something that once might have been said about the invention of the telephone or the alumni mag or even the postal service. If there’s a correlation between effort and friendship, all my friendships are meaningless compared to the friendships of my ancestors.
That said, you’re asking good questions. I’m happy to have read your post and given some fresh thought to my use of Facebook. For now, though, none of the concerns you raised are enough to drive me away from the site. In the end, Facebook seems to be nothing more than a really elaborate blog that allows you to handpick your readership. (Yes, my info can be harvested by marketers, but I assume they can achieve the same mischief using my actual blog posts, my Google searches, and my online comments about blog posts like this one I’m making right now. Who knows? Maybe you’re a marketer, Rob, and your post was just a crafty way of probing attitudes about Facebook. I’m kidding, of course.)
Finally, anyone freaked out by your post should remember that it’s possible to hold back on what you put on Facebook. I just used Facebook to make contact with a friend I haven’t seen in almost 20 years. She now lives all the way in Singapore. It’s a fantastic thing to be back in touch—a feat that would have been damn near impossible for my ancestors. But that doesn’t mean Facebook is now the owner of our friendship. We’re not going to be staying in touch on Facebook. We’ll send e-mail. Facebook was simply the way of getting back in touch. There’s no rule that you have to put your whole life on there.
Thanks for getting us thinking, Rob.
Comment by David from Seattle — November 23, 2008 @ 11:29 pm
An interesting consideration to discuss. My own experience has been that I think of my Facebook “friends” as my virtual community, and, as such, I benefit by their postings, their photos, their announcements and invitations to events and by their possibly daily one-line “blogettes” or status updates. I also have re-connected with many old acquaintances and professional peers with whom I had lost all contact. Because they are not part of my inner circle, it’s natural to lose touch, but now I can check in with them and get a sense of what they are focussing on in their lives. I find it a useful and highly expansive process. Plus you can use it as much or as little as you please. Intellectually I find myself challenged and interested, without having personal contact involved. So far, so good.
Comment by Judith from New York City — November 24, 2008 @ 12:09 am
Pessimistic is a judgment call—highly subjective to what one uses Facebook for, and what one imagines most people use Facebook for.
More so than negative, I’d say this argument has been over-thought in an effort to validate the thesis of “consumer friendship.”
For decades, new technology has been scapegoated as threatening to undermine traditional “healthy” culture and society. The same arguments of isolation and “lazy” socialization were used against the telephone, the television, and the internet in general.
All the while, in reality, these contraptions have only helped us to educate ourselves, expand our social ability and prowess, and help us become more wholly rounded and aware of our ability to connect with a greater humanity.
Comment by Mark — November 24, 2008 @ 12:11 am
I don’t agree that mediating friendships through Facebook is a “nearly effortless and highly insulated” enterprise. It’s a tool that certainly makes “managing” friendships more “convenient,” but I would not say that it makes it “effortless.” Facebook doesn’t “do” friendship for you; you “perform” friendship through it (as you would through face-to-face interactions, phone calls, etc). It’s a medium, and like any other, has those limitations. You have to post on walls, use applications, utilize the network that it affords you. These things take time and effort….
Comment by Usree from Berkeley — November 24, 2008 @ 1:18 am
For someone who lives in a small town—moved for work—without much social contact apart from wife, kids, and co-workers, Facebook is a blessing. Sure I worry about the advertising profile aspect etc. but the service is very fun, convenient, and has put me into contact with people I haven’t talked to in years. It’s definitely a savvy way to collect marketing data and target advertising, but I’m willing to pay the cost in order to make contact with old friends.
Comment by blip_blap — November 24, 2008 @ 8:05 am
Facebook is a marketplace where friendship is the product. And just like frozen food or microwave popcorn, friendship on Facebook is cheaper, easier, less tasty, and less nutritious than the real thing. For all those who say it’s “fantastic to be back in touch” with someone or who think they are expanding their social prowess, I say wake up. You are SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER, expending little more effort than if you were watching TV and changing the channel. Yes, you are becoming an excellent typist, a great up-loader of pictures, maybe even a fantastic entertainer (the real measure of success on Facebook and most of the internet in general). But you are NOT becoming a friend or experiencing anything remotely close to friendship. You are simply becoming an easy, convenient product for your “friends’” consumption. And they for yours. Substitute the word “toy” or “channel” on every Facebook page where you see the word “friend”—seriously, go try it—and it will read just as logically, yet more truthful. Wake up.
Comment by Dan Adams from New York, NY — November 24, 2008 @ 8:39 am
— PopMatters sponsor —
Remember that when the novel was first introduced, many screeds were written about how it would prevent people from socializing properly and corrupt young minds. This argument has been made about countless new media and it has never proved true, no matter how logical it seemed.
Facebook is exactly what it’s called: an album for keeping track of friends, events and histories. Sharing some of this info with marketers is the price we pay for its convenience. It will be very hard to convince me that sharing some old high school photos with friends somehow makes me a bad companion, a lazy person or some sort of zombie-like computer automaton. Only if I were skipping saturday night appointments to stalk people online would your worries be justified, and let me assure you that the possibility for that sort of behavior predates Facebook by many centuries.
Comment by Joe — November 24, 2008 @ 9:06 am
Dan,
Most of us adults who you use Facebook are not under the illusion that the act of electronic contact makes all of us good friends. (Just as in life, I have good friends, friends, and acquaintances in my facebook “friend” list. Facebook is a means of sharing photos, news, and reflections with all of them.) Your superior tone is misplaced. And its convenience has actually allowed me to get to know many of them better because of the unguarded nature of many of the Facebook interactions. Facebook users aren’t dolts and we know we are “SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER.” Facebook ain’t friendship. It’s a tool.
Comment by blip_blap — November 24, 2008 @ 10:18 am
I like to think of Facebook as an environment in which we interact with others. It provides conduits and constraints for our communication as do all environments, physical or digital. To what degree we are affected by aspects of a given environment (in Facebook, ads, applications, effortlessness of keeping in touch, etc.) is difficult to determine, but I believe the actions I take on Facebook are primarily a product of interaction with other people and not with the environment itself.
Also, I think that Facebook doesn’t necessarily make our friendships superficial, but it does make it easier for us to filter them, for better and worse.
Facebook presents both dangers and opportunities as a medium for communication. Relying solely on Facebook for all social interaction would certainly cause us to lose some of the most valuable aspects of our friendships, but as one of a number of social environments in my world, I find it to be useful and beneficial to my social life.
Comment by Amanda — November 24, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Blip-blap,
And there’s nothing wrong with eating frozen pizza, canned soup, and Wonder Bread. You will probably live a long life. But what kind of life is it? What are you missing? And more important, when you become the CREATOR of those kinds of products in addition to consuming them, which, in the case of Facebook means you spend your brief time alive concocting your own Facebook page for others to consume, what this mean about YOU?
And if that sounds like a “superior tone”, you’re darn right. It makes a DIFFERENCE how you live your life. Just ask your children, your parents, or your closest (actual) friend.
Comment by Dan Adams from New York, NY — November 24, 2008 @ 10:43 am
Dan,
Ack! Don’t want a message board war—those can get pitiful and are so counter-productive—so I’ll just say I do have real friends, like real pizza, pumpernickel rye, and generally avoid soup. Facebook is a tool and you should probably grasp the irony any moment now of dissing electronic contact while simultaneously arguing on a message board. I’m going to go hang out with my electronic friends now.
Comment by blip_blap — November 24, 2008 @ 11:01 am
I’m constantly amazed by the willingness to abdicate responsibility or accountability for one’s own actions as so clearly demonstrated here.
This is like saying the wrench was responsible for tightening up the plumbing and the plumber wasn’t involved at all. Worse, we never again bothered turning the water on!
McLuhan first told us that the medium is the message, but that’s not the end of the equation. The message is the catalyst to interaction, and it doesn’t much matter whether that interaction is mediated or face-to-face. The message doesn’t exist in a vacuum. If people re-encounter each other on Facebook it is not different from running into each other on line at the Motor Vehicle Bureau. It’s what we decide and choose to do subsequently that is the real action.
There’s a certain Luddite quality to “blaming” social networking for anything. As Bucky Fuller told us, “anything nature lets us get away with is natural.”
Comment by Howard M. Cohen from New York — December 14, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
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Comment by engineering colleges in mumbai list from Mumbai — January 11, 2009 @ 9:27 am
I am not really into this huge phenomenon called Facebook more than I am into Hi5! I know it sounds a little bit lame to compare the two sites, but it is not if consider them from an impartial point of view.
Comment by Kenmore parts — February 3, 2009 @ 4:34 am