February 24, 2011
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Advancements in Being “Liked”
Last spring I was on the popular website IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base where uninformed movie fans go to become informed about movies that they are fans of. I was gathering information (or “data”, I guess) about Iron Man 2. Specifically, I was looking for the plot synopsis of the film. After reading it, I concluded that the plot seemed entertaining and engaging enough for me to want to watch the film in theaters. I also realized that Scarlett Johansson was in the movie, which made the film even more intriguing not because I enjoy her acting (which I do, sometimes), but because the tight black jumpsuit she wears as the Black Widow accentuates her large breasts.
Anyway, while I was reading the Iron Man 2 page on IMDB, I noticed that there was a Facebook “Like” button at the top of the page. I also noticed that it said, “Jason Bautista likes this.” “What in the name of Robert Downey, Jr. is going on here?” I asked to no one in particular. Why is Facebook on IMDB, and why is it telling me that my friend Jason Bautista likes Iron Man 2? Was this some kind of computer glitch? Does Jason like all movies on IMDB, or only super hero ones? Does Jason know about this?
I realized that I was asking the wrong questions. After that visit to IMDB, I started seeing the “Like” button all over the internet. For the past year now, it’s been popping up on news sites, sports sites, blogs, and just about any other website that has the potential to be Likeable. If you’re logged into Facebook while visiting these sites, that “Like” button will tell you if any of your friends “Like” that site, and if you “Like” a site, that action will show up in your Facebook friends’ News Feed. Or, in summary, Facebook has gone nuts and has taken over the internet.
Now, there is probably nothing wrong with what Facebook is doing. I’ve read their privacy policy and I’ve consciously agreed to it, so, if they’re giving away my information, I can’t complain about not knowing about it (although there may be ethical issues regarding Facebook changing their privacy policy every several months). Nevertheless, it certainly feels like all sorts of creepy. Ever since the mid 1990s when the internet became relevant to the average person, the internet has traditionally been thought of as a mysterious place. You could go look for information about anything discreetly and anonymously. Your identity online could be something completely different from who you were in real life. While this is still true, the arrival of social networking websites in the early 2000s opened up the internet. It made people more comfortable with expressing themselves and sharing their information online. And what we’ve realized is that people love talking about themselves. People love sharing pictures and status updates on Facebook, and Twitter helped carry this self-indulgent bullshit to our mobile devices. We’re witnessing the destruction of the anonymous cyberworld and entering a new era of self-glorification. With Facebook expanding its services to beyond the Facebook domain, it isn’t shifting the paradigm. It’s responding to it.
A lot of people don’t like this. I am not one of them. As you may have noticed, I’ve implemented the “Like” button on my blog posts for the past year or so. This is undoubtedly self-indulgent of me to assume that anyone will Like anything that I’ve ever written. Furthermore, I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a formspring page to add to the degeneration of my own humility. The limits of my ego are defined only by the limits of technology. I have no redeeming qualities.
As history has shown, the advancement of technology is a product of our own egos. You’ll have to embrace it or surrender to it. You just don’t necessarily have to “Like” it.
Comments (2)
I guess, like pretty much everything else, it all comes down to the way one would want to look at it. I LIKE the way you ended this post. I definitely find it to be a positive thing that the cyber world isn’t all that mysterious now. I find that there’s a lot of good things that come out of this. Both ethically and economically. By ethically I don’t mean how FB is changing their privacy policy like that is ok but rather, it’s easier to catch perverts and such this way.
Another benefit: when people get that extra boost of confidence and whatnot by telling people about this or that, they’ll (hopefully) spare their real life friends and family the details of such trivial matters. Win/win situation, indeed. Well, in my opinion anyway. xD
This was a fun post. Thank you for sharing!
In this case, I’m not sure “like” buttons is an issue of wanting to talk about yourself, per se. The whole point of social media is that we have a richer experience. Even things like Google looking into the content of our searches and customizing results based on our previous searches, sites visited, and interests are designed to deliver a richer, more useful experience. While we can disable these intrusions into our privacy, reading information about a movie on a website is one thing but knowing that three of my friends liked the movie – and knowing specifically which friends – will tell me a lot of additional information.
And sharing pictures of ourselves and friends and letting friends know what we’re doing is hardly self-indulgent. It’s the same thing humans have done for a long time. The internet just makes it easier and faster and allows us to connect to more people.