Online social networking as theater

Nothing serious actually gets discussed on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. The way these sites have shaped out, nay their new raison d’être, is about making members look good to their friends and peers on the site. It is less about spontaneity and more about theatre.

Sometimes what people want to show off about on social networking sites actually reflect a breakdown in social values. The Daily Mail reports that “drunkenly dancing on tables or collapsing in the street used to be a source of acute embarrassment for young women the morning after the night before. Today, they are more likely to boast about it - to the world, with pictures - on social networking sites”

The sad part of this all is that substituting Internet communities for real-life communities, drinking till you are silly, and other mad-cap behavior could in fact be reflections of a far more serious problem in society.

They could be reflecting the loneliness people feel today as traditional communities and real communication break down. People may be trying to replace real communities and long-term bonds with ephemeral communities that present less risks of failure, but at the same time a smaller chance of real strong bonds.

More than 150,000 girls have signed up to Facebook's online forum "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night", where they openly discuss the various states of inebriation - and undress - they have found themselves in, according to the report in the Daily Mail.

Not only do girls discuss their inebriation, but have unabashedly put up their snaps in various states of drunkenness and undress on the forum.

If social networking in the physical world is about the sharing of common themes and ideas, bouncing out of new and unusual ideas, and generally trying to build community, social networking is surely and quickly emerging more as a well-choreographed spectacle, than as a genuine and spontaneous forum for social interaction. See more on this in my earlier blog titled “Orkut as theatre”.

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Orkut as theatre

Google says don’t shoot the messenger

Google Inc. is agitated that the Indian government may retain a provision in its Information Technology Act., that makes intermediaries such as ISPs (Internet Service Providers), website hosting companies, search engines, email services, social networks liable for illegal user content. See here the comments from a policy analyst at Google India.

Google has reasons to be worried about “intermediary liability”. Recently a cantankerous political party in Mumbai, called the Shiv Sena, demanded that Google’s social networking site, Orkut, should be banned in India, and prosecuted, after some users posted content considered defamatory of the party’s leader.

There is a precedent of sorts for that. In 2004, Avnish Bajaj, the then CEO of eBay’s Indian subsidiary was arrested in connection with the sale of a pornographic video clip on the online auction portal. Bajaj was arrested under the provisions of the Information Technology Act relating to intermediary liability.

I agree that intermediaries should not be held responsible for illegal content. Google’s policy analyst, Rishi Jaitly, says a telephone company is not held responsible if two people use a telephone call to plan a crime.

The argument about the telephone is specious and does not recognize that the times have changed. The content of a phone call between two housewives slandering somebody remains between the two, or if it spreads it will be a few persons at a time.

In contrast, because of the viral nature of content on the Internet, if somebody takes a young girl’s naked picture, using a spy camera, or he takes her face shot and adds someone else’s naked body to it, that picture will be all over the world in seconds.

By the time the aggrieved person discovers that it has happened, and reports it to Google, and then Google goes through its internal procedures to decide whether the content should be brought down or not, that picture will be all over the Internet, and the young lady’s honor and privacy in shambles.

Folks like Google and other Internet service providers have been pushing social networking and online communities without coming up with appropriate ways to counter misuse of these large-scale communication platforms. “It would be technologically infeasible for ISPs and web companies to pre-screen each and every bit of content being uploaded onto our platforms, especially as the amount of information coming online increases exponentially in India and around the world,” says the Google policy analyst.

Fair enough, but what this means is that technology innovation and new applications like social networking, touted as part of the brave new Web 2.0, have thrown up new problems. Like Google and a lot of other people, Indian Parliament's Standing Committee on Information Technology is also fumbling in search of a solution. Don’t blame them. Work with them, because as government they are more concerned about the individual. Perhaps the government worries that if intermediaries are not at all held liable for content, they may be more inclined to turn a blind eye to such content.

Instead Google decides to harangue the government with its self-serving view on Internet freedom and economic development. “More importantly, imposing such a burdensome standard (of intermediary liability) would crush innovation, throttle Indian competitiveness, and prevent entrepreneurs from deploying new services in the first place, a truly unfortunate outcome for the growth of the Internet in India,” says the Google policy analyst.

Internet growth is not the topmost priority for all people. More important to most of them is protecting their modesty and privacy, and that of their children.

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Orkut as theatre

Orkut, the social networking site hosted by Google Inc., is surely and quickly emerging more as a well-choreographed spectacle, than as a genuine and spontaneous forum for social interaction.

A caveat at the outset: this is not a critique of Orkut alone, but of all similar networking sites, that were set up with the promise of helping the youth to socialize and make friends.

The way Orkut has shaped out, nay its new raison d'être, is about making members look good to their friends and peers on the site. It is less about spontaneity and more about theatre.

Members upload their best snaps, chronicle their travels with well-selected snaps clicked in exotic locations, update peers on their wonderful new jobs, and generally convey through their sites that everything is hunky-dory and on the upswing at their end.

Social status on Orkut is predicated largely on the number of persons in your friends listing, even if you barely know some of the persons, or didn't exchange a call or a scrap with some of them for months.

Another measure of Orkut status is the number of scraps in your scrapbook, which most folks on Orkut treasure and accumulate, even though Orkut provides a facility to delete scraps.

The best way to increase the number of scraps is to scrap others as frequently as possible, even if they have nothing much to say, or if what had to be said could have been better said on phone. Hence you have husbands scrapping their wives to say they will be late for dinner, or as banal a comment as “Hey nice to c u here”.

The upshot is that nothing serious actually gets discussed on Orkut. If social networking in the physical world is about the sharing of common themes and ideas, bouncing out of new and unusual ideas, and generally trying to build community, Orkut has become by and large about mechanical scrapping and collection of friends.

There aren’t many new, original ideas of singular importance discussed on Orkut. There is nothing online like the “fiercely agonal spirit” described by the political theorist Hannah Arendt. In contrast, Orkut and other social networking is about conformity, being one with the crowd online, and doing your best to get accepted.

There have been frequent attempts to bring in political debate into Orkut, with communities like “I Hate Pakistan” or “Bush Sucks”(login required). But don’t expect a cerebral, well-informed debate on these communities.

On “Bush Sucks”, for example, besides referring to George Bush as responsible for killing thousands of people, members of Orkut said they hated Bush because “he was born”. Another “Orkuter” hates Bush because “he wants the abstinence of sex...before marrieg (sic)”, while still another dislikes the US President because “i don't know... just hate bush”.

The lack of depth in political commentary largely reflects the psyche of the generation that is currently on Orkut –-- they are primarily in their teens or early and mid 20s. This is the MTV generation that grew up with one credo – hedonism even if most of them can’t spell the word. For them Che Guevara is a picture on a T-Shirt to impress your girl with.

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