The ideology of post humanism in social media is an odd
topic to discuss objectively, however hopefully I can manage to give a few
interesting points to think about. The social community of Facebook may hold
back the true identity of its users.
Basically, there are two types of Facebook users; you have
the creepers, and then you have the posters. I personally like to break these
two categories down into another two components of people’s online tendencies;
the casual users, and the cyborgs. Cyborgs are people I describe as being the
online users who cannot get enough of the daily grind Facebook delivers for the
strangely enlightened individuals, based on the endless feed of information
they receive. The power in this instance obviously, once again lies in the hand
of Facebook itself. Due to the per-perceived ideas of how users should
communicate and carry themselves on the online network, reserved individuals
are more likely to become onlookers and browse the site rather than express
their views. They will choose not to share moments that they feel are important
because the online network may not give credit to their special moments or
thoughts. Ironically, this is the very reason why Facebook is such a popular
social networking website, and has been successful for a number of years.
It’s quite atypical to the original usage reasons around
Facebook which makes it fascinating. As long as cyborgs occupy the social
networking scene, the culture won’t see any changes. However, if everyone
becomes creepers and stops contributing to the general input, the culture will
be completely different and the virtual society will change into a majority of
creepers rather than posters.
References:
McNeill, L. (2012). There is no "I" in network: Social networking sites and posthuman auto/biography. Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, 35(1), 65.
Van Luyn, A. (2015). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place. Lecture 6: Networked Narratives: Intertextuality. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu/jcu.edu.au
Van Luyn, A. (2015). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place. Lecture 6: Networked Narratives: Intertextuality. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu/jcu.edu.au
It’s an interesting thought of a creeper based community rather than posting based, and a more controlled space. As a poster you can control the content posted to an extent, (what people see and who sees it) in a creeper based community who’s posting? To be honest I think the newsfeed will go from pictures of happy family’s, funny vines and witty statuses to ads, many, many, many ads.
ReplyDeleteThe content becomes less community and more company, the power shifts from the community being observed by the company to the companies being observed by the community. Turkle (1995, p249) talks about Individuals learning to look at themselves through the eyes of a the prison guard.
This brings the question, how does this effect the idea of self-surveillance if we are the observers and they are the posters?
References:
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon & Schuste