The art of Facebooking
One year since the pinnacle of social networking landed on York’s campus, Sara Sayeed considers the ways in which Facebook has revolutionalised student culture
Procrastinating, perusing and pootling: my top three, conveniently alliterative, activities of choice - or, some might insist, occupational hazards. Semantic wrangles aside, there is that inconvenient, looming thing of a degree to be had, after all. Yet, exactly one year and 18 days ago, something happened to relieve my angst-ridden existence. Facebook came to York.
I’d heard tell of this ‘website’ from friends, but when it finally arrived, I tried to go along with my cooler friends and feigned nonchalance. But let’s Face it, the minute I was ravished of my wall virginity, with, “Congratulations! Here begins the end of your degree,” I was ruined.
But then I decided to delve a little deeper into Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg’s $2 billion empire. After some brief, (pleasingly diverting) research, unveiling a plethora of websites linking Facebook investors to the CIA, I was forced to take pause and consider this zany notion: when little Mark finally lifted his rimmed eyes from his iMac, gazed at the heavens and declared, “Let there be Facebook!” - was it really good?
When Zuckerburg spawned Facebook in 2004, it was a simple directory intended to facilitate the convoluted web of student life. Yet, it was soon ‘Bye-bye baby’ and ‘Hello, Honey, I Blew Up the Kid’. (For those of you unfamiliar with ‘90s American cinema, in Honey… a zealously techie father’s prize gadget erroneously enlarges one of his children to a 100ft monster; I’m sure you see the Facebook-Frankenstein parallels.)
Facebook now boasts over 18 million users; it garners 30 billion page views and 600 million searches per month, rendering it the seventh most viewed sight in the US - i.e. each user conducts 33 searches per month on Facebook, which is, disconcertingly, a little more than once a day. Still coolly perusing the News-feed?
Oh, the controversial News-feed. When this little feature was first added to Facebook, it spurred quite the outrage; “Nazism!”, “1984… but 2007!” people cried. The protest was channelled, naturally, through a Facebook group: ‘Students against Facebook News Feed Group’.
Arguably, the main source of the “News-feed revolt” (as termed by veteran ‘Facebookers’) wasn’t political indignation, but anxiety. Not so much about what people saw, but the potential revelation of the unseen, covert acts: stalking. And don’t any of you dare contort your faces into incredulity; after reading this, I have no doubt that you will trot along and laboriously scrutinize my profile. As per the Google-grapevine, there is an endemic paranoia amongst Facebook users/stalkers; apparently a ‘Facebook Tracker’ has been invented. This nifty device divulges who has been peeking through your profile. (Breathe; no such device has actually been confirmed. Yet.)
Most of us would be lying if we maintained that the suggestion of this ‘tracker’ didn’t trigger some fretful nail-biting. Such rumours puncture the comfy Facebook bubble and reveal the bunch of peeping Toms we really are. The average Facebook user spends at the very least 22 minutes on Facebook per day. Even if you’re friends with a tenth of the University, it won’t take that long to check your wall, reply to a couple of posts and briefly engage in some poking. The majority of those 22 minutes is spent absentmindedly clicking through other peoples’ profiles and photos. It’s amazing the amount of new people I meet who face me with a bizarre look of recognition. The zenith being when I received a message from some guy saying: “Hey there, I’ve seen you picking up your mail in Derwent…” Christ.
Some, such as that zealous chap, may be interested to know of a website called www.facebookaddiction.com. Or for the less solipsistic stalkers, of the American student who founded Facebook Anonymous. In an article entitled, ‘Don’t worry Facebook addicts, you’re not alone’, this guy lamented: “Hi, my name is Brian and I am a Facebook addict. Facebook doesn’t make me feel like I have friends. Friends aren’t supposed to let you sink deeper into an addiction. It feeds the addiction.” But this doesn’t exemplify what I think is the root of the issue. For most of us (sorry, Brian), the problem is not with the friends, but the pictures.
We all possess an innate fascination with images. What else explains the inordinate success of Heat or Now? It’s not the linguistic dexterity. According to Freud’s theory on ‘Scopophilia’ (the pleasure in looking), people approach others as objects. Unsurprisingly, Freud soon delves into the sexuality of scopophilia; but, kinkiness aside, essentially we gaze to control, to re-figure. By now, the fact that Zuckerburg was a psychology major doesn’t startle. Zuckerburg’s Ivy League education served him well - he’s tapped into all our latent desires and fashioned a social environment that we can’t stop wanting. It feeds our scopopholic impulses and simultaneously allows us control over the flip-side of gaze politics. For every photo we take ‘pleasure in looking’ upon, someone is doing the same to us, but now we have control over exactly what they see. Facebook renders identity malleable, allowing everyone to mould their perfect ‘public-me’. Conscious of our harsh voyeuristic tendencies as we scrutinise other people’s photos, everyone strives to ensure that their projected image is one that they want people to see.
Recently, after a long, hard look at my profile picture, I had to wonder, what have I become? Was I destined to join the ranks of Brian? Oh sweet Jesus, say it isn’t so. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help that Zuckerburg has created the Pringle of virtual social networking; once you pop, you just can’t stop.
