Blog Post # 2 - Response to Social Media Reflection by Charli Lee

http://csmt11.posterous.com/blog-post-1-social-media-reflection

Charli’s blog post made me laugh quite a few times, first with the perfect description of the usual “myspace” pic, and secondly with the texting or social media-ing (I think this should become a real word) while having a face-to-face conversation. I found the myspace reference comical because of how myspace gave such a perfect outlet for people’s vanity and self-obsession. Everyone at least once has shaken their head at people with their thousands of mirror shots or never-ending twitter feed. At the same time though most people if not all who use social media do with either a feeling that they are important or a hope that if they post enough they will become important. Charli stated in her blog post that she “mainly stay(s) on Facebook because (she) like(s) that people who know (her)/want to get to know (her) can see who (she is) and what (she) do(es), and vice versa”. This I completely agree with and find fascinating.

            This idea of importance is highlighted in dana boyd’s article, “Friends, Friendsters, and Myspace Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites”. dana boyd discusses how these social networking sites have manipulated the meaning of “friend”.  She discusses how Friendship has been thought of to stand for “contend, offline facilitator, online community, trust, courtesy, declaration, or nothing”. (8) The meaning of friendship used to be much more personal and precious than it is now. However, as the idea of friendship has become less personal different hierarchies of friendship have also arisen; such as “Top friends” on myspace or limited profile friends on facebook. Before social networks you were only really able to do this when you called someone your “best friend” but social networks let you advertize your hierarchy of friends and also allow you to maintain weak ties with people you probably would’ve lost touch with if you weren’t “friends” on facebook or some other type of social networking site.

            When it comes to day to day life and meeting new people or conversing with old friends you don’t usually go through an entire dialogue about your interests, favorite quotes, hobbies, and favorite music unless it comes up in conversation or maybe if you’re on a first date. This usually only happens over a long period of time if ever. Partially I feel the reason for this is because if you straight up talk about yourself for a long period of time people find that un-attractive and begin to view as self-centered even though given the chance they would probably do the same because face it humans in general tend to be a little bit vain. However, social media allows you the chance to take those hundreds of pictures of yourself and look completely normal. It also allows you to talk about yourself endlessly without being told to shut up. I think it might be because social media allows filtering and therefore allows the information that you are sharing to be not so “in your face”. Therefore people no longer particularly focus on the fact that it could be seen as vain because if they don’t want to look at it they don’t have to. Also on the other side it allows people to get to know people that they’ve only met a few times or maybe never more intimately without being seen as creepy or as a stalker. I think it’s just fascinating how social media has changed or manipulated much rhetoric (I hope I’m using that word correctly) in our society.

            However, at the same time it also leads to new behaviors to look down upon such as the excessive texting or social media-ing during a face-to-face conversation. When Charli mentioned this I couldn’t help but laugh because my mother goes on and on about how much she hates this. I think this behavior exists because of our need to be in the loop. I do agree though, that it can become disrespectful and downright annoying. Sometimes it changes the dynamic of a conversation or even a relationship because the attention is so easily shifted. It can lead to people feeling inadequate. 

 

Jessica Weinberg