Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Facebook: My Friends for Your Pleasure

At times, Facebook seems to be more about publicizing my social life to others than about making it rapidly accessible for me. In order to be able to search through and contact all of my friends, I have to (or am strongly encouraged to) make my photograph, trivial interests, and current friend-banter available to anyone who might view my profile, as well as make public a list of people I claim as friends. There is no way for me to designate whether the persons in my Facebook social circle are friends or acquaintances--I can't qualify the strength of the ties.

I find the control imposed upon me by Facebook most bothersome in what it does to my (and others') conception of public and private communication. Posting on a friend's wall is almost too easy: navigate to his or her profile, type in a text area, and click a button. In an instant, my message (necessarily short, max 1000 characters) is visible to anyone in the social, institutional, or regional network my friend and I share. Not only that, but interlopers may also see every word ever exchanged between me and this friend via wall posts by clicking "Wall-to-Wall." You may see why this bothers me.

Now, if only networked publics like Facebook were not so good at establishing norms (of communication, in this case). If I received even half as many private Facebook messages as I do wall posts, I would feel comfortable sending one without the fear that my friend might read too much intimacy into my message --and be totally happy that everything I had to say to my friend remained between us. Oh, for a day in e-life without the performativity of The Wall. Because there's almost nothing so important to tell that I'd consider it worth shouting across the Main Green in April.

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