Friends like these

I have some immediate reactions to the article in the Guardian on Monday 14th January entitled 'With Friends like these...'(here is the link) that I was alerted to through the nettime listserv. This article really tells us more about the author (Tom Hodgkinson) than it does about Facebook, opening with line 'I despise Facebook'. The article fits with a classically naive version of the social implications of the Internet that arrives with each new technological possibility (email, you tube, blogging and now SNS like Facebook). There are always those saying, well actually, doesn't the Internet actually make us further apart? No. If anything, the net allows people to be even more social in their everyday lives, it is incredibly reductionist to presume that one simply replaces the other. Moreover, real life and the interaction we have in online communities are uniquely interwoven into this concept of 'being social'. Tom Hodkinson reports that in Facebook 'I can construct an artificial representation of myself in order to get sex'. Again, I don't think this what the majority of people use Facebook for. Although, I am intrigued by the interactional process that leads from the simplistic movement of taking a photograph to how this is constructed into an 'artificial representation'. What about this photograph is artificial? Presumably nothing. So then it is in the surrounding discourse that brings the artificial to life. I'm sure many people like to construct a certain image online, but to condemn that entire process to be about getting sex seems farfetched.

As with any area of public life the marketers have tried to find a way to tap into potential audiences, just as two people standing on the street have a large advisement in the background, as does communication in Facebook. I completely disagree with the idea that Facebook is profoundly uncreative, particularly in light of advertising. It is important to remember that Facebook members provide the content, nothing more. From my use of Facebook and studying a similar SNS that got heavily involved with Advertising (MySpace) it is interesting to note how little notice member take of advertising. If anything, it has become an expectation of anything in a modern society. Again, what is noticeable here is that you can not accuse the people of being uncreative when you have been put off by the advertising. Uncreative, you obviously have found the wrestler application! If anything I dislike the view that people in SNS are any different to those in real-life. For many, the relations they have online are just as 'real'. Taken from the article:

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out
of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then
sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at
all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.