I was talking to Eddie the other day (i.e. Monday after class) about the Fife article and Facebook being fake and not really a good tool for in-class rhetorical analysis. His point was that Facebook is necessarily a social tool whose purpose is to accrue more followers by any means necessary. Or, I guess more correctly, having an eye on "likes" whenever you post something. I almost completely disagreed with him, using my own example of not caring as an example.
But I started to think about it and of course I care. First of all, I don't use Facebook all that much, but I like when the stuff I post gets likes, it's a good feeling. I don't tailor my posts for that purpose, though. Or do I? Maybe, I don't know. The real question, though, is how much use can Facebook have in the classroom?
I saw this chart the other day on Facebook that showed it could sort of predict when a romance was blooming between two people. It's from an article on The Atlantic called "When You Fall In Love, This Is What Facebook Sees" Here is said chart:
The argument this chart is making is that courting people tend to post more messages back in forth on each other's walls until they flip the "In A Relationship" switch, where things steadily cool off. This is something that might be a big difficult to see without lots of data, but it does suggest that it can be a useful tool.
In fact, I think it can be a very useful tool. If you're on twitter, you might know about a phenomenon called "subtweeting". A subtweet is basically a vague tweet about a specific person without mention of the person. Like, if I were to say "I guess some people don't know how to thanks." Or, think of the entire song "You're So Vain." Facebook timelines are filled with these so-called sub-posts. Eh, that's stupid, I've got something else.
Facebook is a way for people to present themselves in a strict format. It could be how they want to be seen, it could be how they actually are, it could be some third thing, like what they wish they were but know in they're heart they are not.
But back to what I was saying at the beginning, I guess. What people choose to post or not post is making an argument, if you want to get meta. Is that even meta? Probably not. I'm way all over the map here. Not my best entry.
OK, let's try again. Take two: Facebook profiles can be analyzed the same way we analyze (or were supposed to analyze) our discovery drafts: by looking at what the different elements of the profile are trying to do. Are the different quotes, posts, pictures showing us that a particular person is fun, worldly and outgoing, or are they simply saying, "I'm fun, worldly and outgoing"? Are there lots of pictures of wild drinking and carousing, but also the religion says "devout christian"? Is a recently broken up person posting a lot more sexy pictures, like, "this is what you're missing, asshole"?
And I think even if your point with Facebook is just to post things that get likes and get lots of followers, what tactics are being used to do it? How much are they posting, what websites or people do they reblog? Was that a recent huge uptick in posting? A recent stoppage or massive slowdown? All these tell a story.
When you're creating a post, you're thinking extensively about what you want that post to say about you. What you want your profile to transmit about you. Like, "I like these things and these people and these quotes and if you also like these things and these people and these quotes, then you might like me." Alternatively, if you post frequently about Men's Right's organizations and how the PC police are ruining America, that also makes a strong statement of, "Hey, let's not hang out."
Of course people are complex, and Facebook arguments are often tightly controlled, but that in itself is making an argument, that argument being, "I'd rather be blandly not-hated than genuinely liked." Everything on Facebook is a mask, just some people's mask looks more like what's under it than other people's.
Use take two.
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