a few puzzled musings about Facebook...

The Facebook narrative is growing. A lot.

Lately I keep noticing more and more stuff that I can, with the ease of a couple of clicks, share on my Facebook account. When I buy a book on Amazon, theres a "share that you bought this book" button. When I want read an article on the online washington post, I can't get to before Ive decided whether or not I would like to share the fact of my reading this article on Facebook. Pretty much anything I buy online gives me the option of sharing the joyous news of my purchase with my facebook and/or twitter/google + network.

And then there's Spotify, which gives you the option of letting your facebook network see and possibly share what music you are listening to throughout the day. And Foursquare, so you can broadcast your whereabouts and perhaps even tag the people you were with.

Today, my twitter network (tx hrheingold) brought to my attention this blog post by a teacher who finds that letting the students create their own class discussion forum by making it a group on Facebook works much, much better than the forum he usually sets up for a class, probably in connection to a university website or intranet.

http://andrewdouch.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/myclassfacebookgroup/

Everything seems to be slowly sucked into Facebook (or maybe not so slowly). It makes sense, critical mass and all, but what really makes me wonder is the expansion of the self narrative we are publishing. The Facebook personal daily storytelling is of course an integral part of our narrative and our self presentation and all that, and the challenging thing regarding this, is that it is quite heavily co-constructed, as the comments and posts of other people play a constant part in it, making it a narrative that we are only partially in control of. (See Danah Boyds work on American teenagers' social media use or my own more humble bachelors paper for more thoughts on this). What is new and puzzling to me are all these aspects of our daily life that are being incorparated into this personal performance. The music. The newsreading. The online purchases. Checking into a new bar or just work or the Helsinki airport through Foursquare. Our consumerism has become more an act of performance than ever before. All actions are becoming a part of a semi-public personal web-opera. And for some, I know, the balance shifts towards doing things in anticipation of being able to post about it on facebook. The action in itself becomes less important than the network-sharing of it. I wonder if our actions will eventually only seem real to us once we get them validated by a few likes and comments.

Im not worried or against here. This is not a "the world is changing and I DONT LIKE IT!!" post. Im just intrigued. Im reminded of Anthony Giddens' thoughts of the fragmented narrative, the way we, exposed to all the information and cultural content of the world through the Internet, define our selves by the carefull selection of fragments to make up a coherent identity or, as he puts it, a coherent narrative. Being able to construct a coherent narrative is according to him a vital part of what makes us feel safe and whole and real. I wonder, now as we are growing accustomed to broadcasting more and more details of our daily lives, is this becoming easier or harder? More riddled with risk of breaks and incoherence? And can we actually keep managing to whom we present what? We may have a vague idea of whom our Facebook network actually consist of, but what if I, in my frantic self-publishing efforts get mixed up in what I reveal to Facebook and what I reveal on twitter or LinkedIn? Do I then loose all control of my narrative and how can that be managed?

Maybe we are truly all moving towards radical openess, as I remember being hyped for large businesses and very public figures a few years back. Its so very interesting. And of course the cautioning note from the grumpy old social anthropologist that lives inside me. Are we getting so bussy performing our daily opera that we are forgetting just to enjoy and be and live for its own sake? Well, thats probably not the case :)

rant rant rant.... enough for today.