Metaphors
As the few people who read this blog know, I've recently dived into the world of Facebook. It's hard to say what finally drew me in. I'd been feeling a bit like there was a party going on that I was invited to, but was stubbornly insistant on not attending. I also noticed more and more that creative types were using it as a marketing tool and I figured that I should get in on that. But what really did it was seeing a link on article at the Onion. I see such links all over the web these days and figured that if everyone was taking the time to provide them, maybe there was something to it. So even though I enjoyed my crumudgeonly ways of bucking the zeitgiest, I gave in. And I enjoy it. Sort of. I'm not sure I find it as useful as I imagined, but I'm still drawn in by it several times a day.
The biggest thing that perplexes me about FB is the issue of "friends." This is a word that used to have some real meaning in the world, but it feels diluted in the environment of FB. Everyone you connect with there is a friend. There is no status other than that. My wife is a friend. Some minor celebrity is a friend. My friend's cat is a friend. Maybe if FB had chosen a different word it wouldn't bother me so much. And I know that having a whole slew of status derived quantifiers could be cumbersome (I imagine all sorts: acquaintance, business associate, jilted lover, star fucker, etc.). Still, I wish there were a way to recognize that not all my friends are friends and that my real friends are real friends.
Then there is public display of your friends. When I first signed up, I really only had the intention of connecting with a few people. Perhaps five or six at the most. But as I add those friends, their friends wanted to add me as a friend. This was unexpected...and kind of nice. I felt this sudden on-rush of popularity. So my circle grew to about thirty. Then I started to get sucked in more. I've started seeking out many old friends and acquaintances that I had honestly forgotten about. And I've been frustrated that some that I'm searching for don't seem to be members. I'm now up in the sixties with no apparent end in sight. It's only been a few weeks, but I already feel the pressure to add more and more friends. Plus I've noticed that there are things revealed about a persons personality if you look at the quality and quantity of friends they list. I want to make sure that I'm represented well in that regard.
I've also been flabbergasted by the etiquite involved. What if someone I truly don't know that well wants to be my friend? Is it rude in this community to simply turn people down? It seems against how I was raised to say "no" to someone who wants to be my "friend."
There's really no way that I'm going to ever be fully comfortable with Facebook. It's fascinating and bewildering all at once. What I can't ignore is the metaphor that is has become. Or maybe a meta-metaphor or multi-metaphor. It represnts many elements of the real world, which is maybe it's strongest asset.
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Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. function as yet another real life metaphor as exemplified in an article that an FB friend sent me a link to:
The High Cost of Running YouTube
It's ironic that some of the web's most popular sites generate huge losses for the companies that operate them. User generated content doesn't seem to have the capacity to generate financial gain. If this fact doesn't scream metaphor, than I'm not sure what else would.
It's hard to envision a web that required us to pay for everything we use, but it's equally as hard to imagine living without many of things we use on the web. The lifeblood of the web isn't in actual money, but in the people using it. Maybe someday that won't matter.
The biggest thing that perplexes me about FB is the issue of "friends." This is a word that used to have some real meaning in the world, but it feels diluted in the environment of FB. Everyone you connect with there is a friend. There is no status other than that. My wife is a friend. Some minor celebrity is a friend. My friend's cat is a friend. Maybe if FB had chosen a different word it wouldn't bother me so much. And I know that having a whole slew of status derived quantifiers could be cumbersome (I imagine all sorts: acquaintance, business associate, jilted lover, star fucker, etc.). Still, I wish there were a way to recognize that not all my friends are friends and that my real friends are real friends.
Then there is public display of your friends. When I first signed up, I really only had the intention of connecting with a few people. Perhaps five or six at the most. But as I add those friends, their friends wanted to add me as a friend. This was unexpected...and kind of nice. I felt this sudden on-rush of popularity. So my circle grew to about thirty. Then I started to get sucked in more. I've started seeking out many old friends and acquaintances that I had honestly forgotten about. And I've been frustrated that some that I'm searching for don't seem to be members. I'm now up in the sixties with no apparent end in sight. It's only been a few weeks, but I already feel the pressure to add more and more friends. Plus I've noticed that there are things revealed about a persons personality if you look at the quality and quantity of friends they list. I want to make sure that I'm represented well in that regard.
I've also been flabbergasted by the etiquite involved. What if someone I truly don't know that well wants to be my friend? Is it rude in this community to simply turn people down? It seems against how I was raised to say "no" to someone who wants to be my "friend."
There's really no way that I'm going to ever be fully comfortable with Facebook. It's fascinating and bewildering all at once. What I can't ignore is the metaphor that is has become. Or maybe a meta-metaphor or multi-metaphor. It represnts many elements of the real world, which is maybe it's strongest asset.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. function as yet another real life metaphor as exemplified in an article that an FB friend sent me a link to:
The High Cost of Running YouTube
It's ironic that some of the web's most popular sites generate huge losses for the companies that operate them. User generated content doesn't seem to have the capacity to generate financial gain. If this fact doesn't scream metaphor, than I'm not sure what else would.
It's hard to envision a web that required us to pay for everything we use, but it's equally as hard to imagine living without many of things we use on the web. The lifeblood of the web isn't in actual money, but in the people using it. Maybe someday that won't matter.
I've turned down several people, a few of them were people I actually did know IRL. Nothing bad ever happened to me as a result.
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I agree with Chuck...and they don't seem to even realize they've been turned down. I've found I know more people than I thought I did. A LOT of our family is on...and you know how big that is.
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I find the connections between people the most entertaining. Like the fact I know two different people from different parts of my past and now those people know each other but not through me. It's creepy somehow, but I like knowing these things. But I too was surprised by how many people I know. And for how many I don't know for that matter. I see some of my friends with hundreds of people on their list. I could not manage a social circle that big, but my guess is that they don't really actively keep that many people in their life.
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After a few weeks on FB, I had, like, 62 friends. The next day, I had 61 friends. 61. Someone de-effing-friended me and I have no idea who it was. This was December, and it is still killing me.
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I've had a few people that I tried to friend, but never heard anything from them. I wish it would tell you whether people genuinely ignored you or that they maybe never log on and didn't get the request. Plus, I want to know why they ignored me. They should have to justify their rejection. I'm hurt.
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