facebook = reification.

i probably ought to start off by saying that i am still boycotting facebook, but i have been trying out google+ this summer, so i have acquired some familiarity with the whole social media phenomenon. i have also been observing the facebook habits of others from the outside, as is the proper researcher stance (that was a joke). also, i apologize in advance for the ridiculous language in the following post. i've been at school all day, reading philosophy, and the language is infectious.

i have come to the following conclusion: for many people who use facebook, especially those under the age of 30 (the so-called millenial generation), it is the offline world which is more or less unreal, and things are only real when posted or transcribed online, and especially when they are commented on or noticed by "friends." this is contra the usual usage where things happen "on the internet" and "in real life." real life is now facebook, and things that happen offline are merely feeder material for the self-curated online presence.

the glib internet meme "pics or it didn't happen" is demonstrative of this, i think. it is an extremely ironic statement in an age when we are all so aware of the ease of manipulation of digital images. and yet still, somehow, putting a picture of an event online is testimony to its veracity, to its very existence. a thing is not a thing unless it is online for others to see.

but i think facebook takes this to another level. with the obsession of the number of friends one has, and the posting of all life events, regardless of their possible standing in posterity, the nexus of these two elements becomes the location of reality. i think the very compulsion to post images and status updates that record any and all states and events in life is what makes people feel real and connected to a community somehow.

it is pretty much agreed that humans are social creatures. autism is a disorder precisely because it removes from a human the basic need to be in community with other human beings. this is fairly obvious from the anguish parents feel the need to post online about (again, posting online) even children diagnosed with the mildest forms of the spectrum.

however, as we labour under the desperate gasps of a dying modernity, individualism rules the day (i also happen to believe that this is modernity, not postmodernity and that the postmodern project has failed, but that's the subject for another post when i'm feeling more depressed). we are all our own subjects, distressingly separated and cut off from other autonomous subjects. it is in the online communication that we can merge the need for community and our inherited individualism. moreso, it is in the recognition of the artifacts of lives online that people feel truly real.

i'm still going to boycott facebook.