Strange, Troubling Times: facebook as Big Brother

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” –George Orwell

“The lions and the lambs ain’t sleeping yet.” –Arcade Fire, ‘The Well and the Lighthouse

In his magnum opus, 1984, George Orwell created a dystopia where the Ministry of Love (headed by Big Brother) observed everything that the proles (working class) of Eurasia and Eastasia did, said and thought.

I remember the first time I heard someone say that we should be careful what we put online. It was my favorite college professor. At the time, I only had a livejournal. I’d always been careful not to post anything that I felt may be incriminating. She talked about how potential employers could see what we were doing, as could the police. Now, I don’t believe she is some latter day Nostradamus, just someone with common sense who could see where the internet was taking us.

Then, we were our own worst enemies.

Recently, I received an e-mail from my friend Craig about a New England Patriots cheerleader who was cut from the team because facebook pictures of her drawing (Swastikas and unbecoming words) on a passed out friend leaked online. Most of us would argue that this was tame and she didn’t deserve to be let go. However, what we think doesn’t really hold any weight, what matters (right or wrong) is what her employer thought about the photos.

If you read my previous facebook essay, you know that I wrote about the lack of “real” connections being made through social networking. I stated that facebook’s most appealing feature was the ability to watch other people fail, and that any media that is predicated upon such a thin, vile premise must either adapt or cease to exist. Today, I’ve found more uses for facebook, but I still strongly believe that the connections we form via social networking are often too whimsical (I used to know this person, kind of) and too meaningless (you knew my brother, not me) to positively impact our lives. But more importantly, the real problem with social networking is that we don’t critically think about its’ myriad pro’s and con’s, and it is my contention that most don’t even think about the media they consume and partake in, and its effects.

facebook is dangerous for the same reason that it is compelling, it gives countless people unprecedented access into the lives of others. It’s like porn for voyeurs. And it is almost impossible for many of us to resist partaking in. But why?

I’ve dubbed this generation the Share Me Generation. Today, everything is about Me. (Not to say that there is no virtue in thinking of oneself, there is. However, I don’t see virtue in the way that Generation Share Me broadcasts itself; most have no panache or common sense.) I won’t argue that social networking (and blogging) is the biggest factor in the genesis of Share Me, but it has to make the list. People my age (and younger) seem to believe that their opinions, ideas and drunken pictures of debauchery belong in a public domain, in totality, sans filter. (1)

This is wrong in the same way that it is wrong for the Share Me Generation checkout girl at Pick ‘n Save to tell me she is having a long day. In both cases, I’m not supposed to know these things, and frankly, it is unnatural for me to. Though, today, openness is oft rewarded, socially at least. We look up to people who appear frank, both in person and over the interweb. Frankness is only a virtue when people know how to filter themselves, and in the case of Generation Share Me, there is a significant deficiency in the area of filters.

Unfortunately for us, Orwell’s sage advice went unheeded. Now we are all enemies of each other, though we don’t realize it: Our weapons of choice, the camera, the camcorder and the computer.

Not only are we not part of the revolution (that Winston Smith probably hoped for in 1984), we are actively perpetrating the function of Big Brother upon each other with our camera lenses and our mouses (mice?). Of course, some will say, just untag the pictures, and yes, that may work, for now, but with no idea where these pictures (and other virtual media) will end up or whose (virtual) hands they are in now, it may be a little more wise to see that photos are outright deleted, etiquette be damned.

In Orwell’s vision, it was high-ranking government officials who were performing surveillance upon the subservient proles. The reality today is even scarier than the picture that Orwell painted; we are performing that surveillance on each other, for free, (and most troubling) without even thinking about it.

I believe if we really thought about it and came to a consensus, our desire is that facebook be our virtual representative, our showplace, to friends and acquaintances. Yet, we also desire a certain level of privacy that is unheard of in the virtual realm. The swath of humanity that has access to facebook makes it ineffective at achieving both ends of the dual purpose that we want it to serve. facebook is both great and scary because it negates one thing that the internet has always been good at offering, anonymity. In other words, its exciting because it flies in the face of convention.

This essay is not a call to action, per say, but a hope that the people that read this, my facebook “friends”, at least begin thinking about and discussing the many possible implications and outcomes of social networking. Are we being more intelligent than the generation before us? Are our actions symptomatic of the advent of social networking (being that whichever generation first received this technology would employ it in a similar manner that we do (2))?

I propose that the answer is a resounding no. This is a much bigger topic than I intend to take on here, but it is many of our parents (mostly like the generation after our parents, though many of our parents were early adopters of this mindset) who have propagated this belief that the life of the child is so important. (Some examples: how safe playgrounds are now, attending every little league game and not keep score, not having friends of their own, et. al.) It is all about feelings these days, and we have been made to feel like we are worthy of spotlight, we court its rays with the most powerful media available. Not thinking critically or independently about the consequences of this desire.

I’d like to see our generation start to treat their facebook pages a little more like resumes and a little less like personal party chronicles. Maybe that is lofty and unreasonable, and maybe it’s society that is rebelling against us instead of the other way around. Yet, we are setting the precedent for what social networking will be in the future by our actions today. Let’s stop extending a helping hand to forces that work against our best interests and start helping each other by making wise choices in regard to how we employ all of the technology we use and media we consume.

Then, once again, we’ll be able to write things on our passed out friends with Sharpie markers without Big Brother’s jarring glare in our periphery.

1 Often, these photos come in what I’ve taken to calling Photo-Dumps. Sorry if that is a little too vivid, but I think that the allusion is warranted. In both cases, you are releasing waste. I’ll never understand why people post full albums from one party on facebook. Often times you’ll see the same picture two or three times in a row and wonder why that person decided to take a photo-dump instead of just picking out the best one. Again, I don’t profess to understand.

2 In other words, would people in the 1950’s or 60’s act in the same manner that we do if they were given this technology?