Facebook: The Unsocial Network

I agree completely with Aaron Sorkin's (script writer for "The Social Network") remark that " It (Facebook) is pushing us further apart. Socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality." The reality of Facebook and other similar social networking sites is that they are, in fact, not reality, in the same way "reality TV" is not reality. An old adage for filming reality, like the news for example, is that the subject of the filming cannot know they are being filmed. If they do, then they end up acting for the camera that they know is there. The only exception to the rule is Close Circuit Television (CCTV) because we know it is always there and we don't care. Even then we still make silly faces at the CCTV camera as we go into the bank, etc.

This performance-like behavior is the same that we see on social networking sites on Facebook. Facebook is just like the newsreel camera we know is there: we dress up for it and put on the face we expect people to see; whether that face is well thought out is irrelevant. The majority of posts and photos on Facebook are those of milestone events. A wedding, the birth of a new baby, or some kind of devastating news. Whether these events are sad or pleasant, they end up on Facebook. Dirty laundry also appears on Facebook, but even that, albeit unpleasant or unflattering, isn't indicative of the reality of that particular user, just of some point of their life they feel is interesting to share with the world. We rarely see the mundane, and the be honest the mundane is what makes life, well, life.

Essentially Facebook is edited reality, and because it is edited, it is no longer reality, making itself a paradox. It is impossible to be oneself on Facebook because nobody can express themselves completely without being face to face with the person they're interacting with. Humans evolved to interact with all five senses, whether with the world or with other humans. The majority of Facebook's communication is done through text, which is just a subsidiary of the sense of sight. There are photos, and on rare occasions video, but it is impossible for a person to give nearly as much meaning in a block of text. Communication through Facebook completely negates the senses of touch, smell, and taste, and negates much of the sense of hearing, and even sight. Through Facebook body language and inflection on words is eliminated, thereby making many words open for interpretations that have nothing to do with the user's initial meaning.

What I find most disturbing about digital communication is that if you know a person only through digital means you lose the ability to smell and touch them. That's a gigantic part of just and individual personality. One of my most cherished memories of my Grandmother is her house always smelled like freshly baked bread. Or swimming with my cousins and wrestling with them in the water. Facebook can catalogue these events and remind me of them, but it is little more than an online album. A social networking site could never replace actually talking with an interacting with a person in real life because it is simply not real.

Facebook has given people a means to interact with each other without actually having to interact with each other. People have gained yet another means to put their best or preferred face forward at all times without having to show what they don't want. While many will argue a drunken photo of a sorority girl and her friends "duck-facing" to the camera isn't their "best face", it is beneficial to the girl because it is proof to the world that she's wild and independent. This photo then has the potential to be seen by thousands of people, even go viral. People want to be seen, to be noticed, and social media has given them the means to do so very easily. The problem is that many people cannot distinguish the edited reality of Facebook, and even reality TV, and what they are actually experiencing in their physical lives.

Social networking, particularly Facebook, is changing how people interact with each other, and while we have gained speed and the ability to communicate on a world stage, we are also losing the means to communicate and connect on a personal level, and this will present a multitude of social problems in the future.

Aaron Sorkin's interview on "The View"

Stan Rogers - The Musical Chair

This episode of Nash Bozard's "The Musical Chair" features one of my favorite folk artists, Stan Rogers. It hit me so hard that I felt I needed to repost it here. This man's music had a gigantic impact on my life and I love how much respect Nash gave him in this video. If you haven't listened to Stan Rogers you have to, he is just epic. And I dare you not to cry at the end of the segment.



Video is owned and produced by Nash Bozard of Radio Dead Air: http://www.radiodeadair.com/

Site Update

Hi Internet!

It's safe to say that it has been a flipping loooooooong time since I've updated this site. The reason being is I am super busy getting used to the new post-secondary program I just started. Awesome thing is, this program is all about websites and digital art, so just by doing my homework I'll have cool stuff to post. But, for other stuff I'm doing, I've got a bunch of artist alley tables over the Christmas season so I'm getting stock ready for that. This stock includes knitted hats, stuffies, pillows, cocktail dresses, and several wicked fanart pieces. As each of these are finished I will (eventually) post them on the site. I'm also working on an epic Loki cosplay and making several pages for this site. Right now there are pages, but they're going to look a lot more awesome once they are out of the editing phase. And I learn more about HTML and CSS. So, in the mean time, here is a picture of my signature and one of my favorite toques:

I'm also working on my Halloween costume, aka fixing up my old Bulma costume and then asking random drunk people for dragonballs :)