A Different Take on Social Networking.
As a Facebook addict and recent user of Twitter, this opinion of Nick Carr is like being dosed with cold ice water:
The great paradox of “social networking” is that it uses narcissism as the glue for “community.” Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together. The community is purely symbolic, a pixellated simulation conjured up by software to feed the modern self’s bottomless hunger. Hunger for what? For verification of its existence? No, not even that. For verification that it has a role to play. As I walk down the street with thin white cords hanging from my ears, as I look at the display of khakis in the window of the Gap, as I sit in a Starbucks sipping a chai served up by a barista, I can’t quite bring myself to believe that I’m real. But if I send out to a theoretical audience of my peers 140 characters of text saying that I’m walking down the street, looking in a shop window, drinking tea, suddenly I become real. I have a voice. I exist, if only as a symbol speaking of symbols to other symbols.
I’m speechless. Your thoughts?
Being online means being alone, and being in an online community means being alone together.
That applies to bloggers as well. I have a fear of becoming a bar fly. I don;t want to be the kind of person who gives the appearance of having an active life, when in fact life is going on somewhere else without me.
I gave social networking a shot and really like hearing from two people. I think I’ll quit for another 20 years and catch up with those two people in 2029.
Hey Nick,
When friends and family members exchange birthday cards is that symbols letting other symbols know they exist?
There is serious stuff and trivial stuff on Facebook, just like every other form of communication.
I try to be interesting. If i think of something weird or experience something odd, I’ll update Twitter and Facebook. Doing the whole “I’m tired and going to bed” thing annoys me.
I agree with JT that online networking is just another way to communicate. I really value the online community. I’ve met so many people that I would never have met otherwise. I felt way more alone before I discovered blogs in 2003 because there were just so few people to talk to and I certainly felt alone in opposing Bush and his war. Facebook is a new form of communication that has allowed me to reconnect with people I haven’t talked to in a long time, that I wouldn’t have talked to otherwise.
Internet communities are a great tool for someone like me, who is somewhat introverted. Online communities are not a substitute for face-to-face interaction but I think they enable it.
I’m predicting a new DSM-IV category out of all of this.
I think Nick Carr is jealous, and is putting it down as a way to justify his lack of acceptance like an 8 year old not being picked to play stickball.
“I didn’t wanna play anyway, it’s stupid.” *pout*
I had to Look that up JC
UI,
Good point. If it is used as a tool – fine. If “social networking” becomes an end in itself, I pass.