facebook vs the internet vs academia
So, I volunteered at the Oregon Rhetoric & Composition Conference today. It was a geeky good time, made especially so because the theme was "The Future of Composition: Methods, Contexts, and Technologies." The internet's influence on rhetoric and the teaching of writing was one of the recurring topics, especially Facebook and blogs.
Let me tell you, there is something really cute about seeing a 60-something PhD encouraging her fellow professors to "dip their big toes in the blogosphere" and leave a comment on her blog. It's so weird being 24 at this thing, with no teaching experience and very little life experience, listening to teachers who've taught for 50-some years, and yet being much more fluent at technology than they'll probably ever be. One of the presenters (who was in his late 70s, I'd guess) went so far as to call people geniuses who used the internet for things other than Blackboard and Facebook. Genius!
In another panel, a classmate of mine gave a paper about social media (and how having a heterogeneous social circle makes it more difficult to form a definitive opinion...but that's beside the point), most notably Facebook, with a little Twitter on the side. Part of the discussion afterward focused more on Facebook, and rhetoric, and I can't really remember until someone spoke up: "Have you heard of this new thing called Formspring? It lets people form communities completely anonymously1." This was apparently a novel concept to the group, and they talked about the implications of anons finding each other by interest, rather than physical friendship.
When the dude brought up Formsping, I thought he was going to make a larger point about full disclosure, and how we come dangerously close to revealing everything on the internet/Facebook...not that he would boggle about anonymous users. I kind of shorted out a little--because, IIRC, that's kind of how the internet started out, no? Anonymity? In chat rooms and over IRC and on message boards? Anonymity is nothing new to the 'net. 4chan was founded in 2003, and I'm certain it wasn't the first of its kind. Even livejournal lets you be as anonymous as you like.
And I get it--I can't really be critical of people who aren't internet geeks, because not all of us are (heck, compared to a lot of people, I'm not even an internet geek). Not everybody has the interest, or the savvy, or whatever. And it's cool.
I just don't get the Facebook-ization of the internet. Somehow, Facebook has become the internet to a lot of people. And it has, in some ways. It's appropriated instant messaging, email, message boards, quizzes, games, fansites--all of these things that existed on the internet before it did. It's become this microcosm of the 'net. And it seems like people think that since they've been on Facebook and played, like, Farmtown, they know about the internet--when that is absolutely not true.
But Facebook is not like the internet: everything you do on Facebook (especially in the new, anti-privacy version) is done under your own name. I think this does a lot to reign in the behaviors of people, make it a bit more civilized...because your fiance or boss or mother can see what you like and do. People who were introduced to the internet through Facebook are used to having their legal names attached to everything they do. So something anonymous, like Formspring, is completely new to them.2
I was lucky enough--if you can call it that--to be introduced to the 'net BF (before Facebook). Not too much before, but enough that I kind of knew how the internet was structured and populated before Facebook opened it up to people who otherwise would have no interest in it. And I know that I'm not the only young academic to be familiar with the internet--the sheer amount of grad students on F_W will attest to that.
I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make here (if there is one), other than the fact that there's this prevailing notion (especially among older academics) that Facebook is the internet, and that anonymity is weird. Maybe I just don't get that academics, who have a very firm grasp on the history of English and of education and of their own chosen specialties, have no grasp of the history of the internet. Maybe it's that there's this whole group of people (and probably a majority of the non-internet population) who view named-and-IRL-based internet usage as the norm, and anonymity as an anomaly, when (to me, at least), it's the other way around.
The Facebook-only part of the population is looking at the internet in a completely different way from the rest of the internet--sometimes I don't think we talk about the same thing (internet hate machine, anyone?). And in this weird appropriation and misinterpretation, the studies that go on (not the ones from "real" internet people, mind) aren't actually studying the internet, but the Other's own version/interpretation of the internet.
And I think that's what bothers me: the people who think that studying Facebook is the same as studying the entire internet. Facebook has a clearly different culture and demographic than other parts of the internet, and so the results from that particular site will be in no way representative of the internet as a whole. And misrepresentation like that is, to me, reprehensible.
Thoughts?
-
1 I am still not sure why this comment rankles me so much.
2 This is rampant speculation. Feel free to call me out on anything I've said here.
Let me tell you, there is something really cute about seeing a 60-something PhD encouraging her fellow professors to "dip their big toes in the blogosphere" and leave a comment on her blog. It's so weird being 24 at this thing, with no teaching experience and very little life experience, listening to teachers who've taught for 50-some years, and yet being much more fluent at technology than they'll probably ever be. One of the presenters (who was in his late 70s, I'd guess) went so far as to call people geniuses who used the internet for things other than Blackboard and Facebook. Genius!
In another panel, a classmate of mine gave a paper about social media (and how having a heterogeneous social circle makes it more difficult to form a definitive opinion...but that's beside the point), most notably Facebook, with a little Twitter on the side. Part of the discussion afterward focused more on Facebook, and rhetoric, and I can't really remember until someone spoke up: "Have you heard of this new thing called Formspring? It lets people form communities completely anonymously1." This was apparently a novel concept to the group, and they talked about the implications of anons finding each other by interest, rather than physical friendship.
When the dude brought up Formsping, I thought he was going to make a larger point about full disclosure, and how we come dangerously close to revealing everything on the internet/Facebook...not that he would boggle about anonymous users. I kind of shorted out a little--because, IIRC, that's kind of how the internet started out, no? Anonymity? In chat rooms and over IRC and on message boards? Anonymity is nothing new to the 'net. 4chan was founded in 2003, and I'm certain it wasn't the first of its kind. Even livejournal lets you be as anonymous as you like.
And I get it--I can't really be critical of people who aren't internet geeks, because not all of us are (heck, compared to a lot of people, I'm not even an internet geek). Not everybody has the interest, or the savvy, or whatever. And it's cool.
I just don't get the Facebook-ization of the internet. Somehow, Facebook has become the internet to a lot of people. And it has, in some ways. It's appropriated instant messaging, email, message boards, quizzes, games, fansites--all of these things that existed on the internet before it did. It's become this microcosm of the 'net. And it seems like people think that since they've been on Facebook and played, like, Farmtown, they know about the internet--when that is absolutely not true.
But Facebook is not like the internet: everything you do on Facebook (especially in the new, anti-privacy version) is done under your own name. I think this does a lot to reign in the behaviors of people, make it a bit more civilized...because your fiance or boss or mother can see what you like and do. People who were introduced to the internet through Facebook are used to having their legal names attached to everything they do. So something anonymous, like Formspring, is completely new to them.2
I was lucky enough--if you can call it that--to be introduced to the 'net BF (before Facebook). Not too much before, but enough that I kind of knew how the internet was structured and populated before Facebook opened it up to people who otherwise would have no interest in it. And I know that I'm not the only young academic to be familiar with the internet--the sheer amount of grad students on F_W will attest to that.
I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make here (if there is one), other than the fact that there's this prevailing notion (especially among older academics) that Facebook is the internet, and that anonymity is weird. Maybe I just don't get that academics, who have a very firm grasp on the history of English and of education and of their own chosen specialties, have no grasp of the history of the internet. Maybe it's that there's this whole group of people (and probably a majority of the non-internet population) who view named-and-IRL-based internet usage as the norm, and anonymity as an anomaly, when (to me, at least), it's the other way around.
The Facebook-only part of the population is looking at the internet in a completely different way from the rest of the internet--sometimes I don't think we talk about the same thing (internet hate machine, anyone?). And in this weird appropriation and misinterpretation, the studies that go on (not the ones from "real" internet people, mind) aren't actually studying the internet, but the Other's own version/interpretation of the internet.
And I think that's what bothers me: the people who think that studying Facebook is the same as studying the entire internet. Facebook has a clearly different culture and demographic than other parts of the internet, and so the results from that particular site will be in no way representative of the internet as a whole. And misrepresentation like that is, to me, reprehensible.
Thoughts?
-
1 I am still not sure why this comment rankles me so much.
2 This is rampant speculation. Feel free to call me out on anything I've said here.