After using Facebook for a while, you come to see some things that just don't fly:
1) Posting 500 pictures of yourself while everyone else has posted 20.
2) Excruciatingly personal confessions /homework questions in a wall post (equally wrong).
3) Changing your birthday every night so that people never stop celebrating you're existence (I've been tempted)
4) Listing 600 bands under your favorite music ('favorite' seems to lose it's meaning after 200...)
and perhaps the subtlest and yet most insidious:
5) Writing on your own Facebook Wall (GASP!) SERIOUSLY!?
Yes. Imagine an alternate reality with me. Back in the beginning when the Facebook was just the Facepamphlet, there was a chance for wall posts to be become virtually anything. They might have evolved to work more like blogs with updates and comments coming in from both the Facebook profiler and his/her allotted friends. They might have even turned into a space strictly allowing ASCII art! However, these options sound preposterous knowing what The Wall is now-- somehow during the whole Facebook shakedown, The Wall worked its way into an entirely guest-based form of communication. If you want to comment on something someone said on your wall, you simply must write it on their wall!
How does this convention come to be known? People start off not knowing exactly what the wall is for, but they quickly find out from observations of how others use it and through first hand experience. Since the entire Facebook environment caters towards the formation of groups, either by locality or by university, it would not be hard to imagine this convention being passed on through online conformity. This situation is very similar to Wallace's description of the conventions that grew to surround e-mail use: E-mails had the potential to be very formal forms of communication with letterheads and strictly enforced linguistics- but instead they became a largely informal means of communication. The development of the wall has followed similar paths resulting in an informal medium whose function is perpetuated by conformity and The Leviathan.
Before we Hunt the big L, let's pinpoint what the offense would be in writing on your own wall. By Margaret McLaughlin's offense types, writing on your own wall would most clearly fall under the category of "Violation of networkwide conventions," where Facebook is the network and the convention is "posting on other people's walls," but the offense might also be considered, "Incorrect/novice use of technology," depending on whether or not the user meant to post on someone else's wall and posted on their own by mistake (whoops! delete.). In either case, The Leviathan resides in the multitude of in-group critics that are quick to expose the violation of convention i.e., The Leviathan is US! As long as we are accepted in the network, we are often expected to follow what Richard MacKinnon termed, "netiquette," and unity is formed and perpetuated by both following this netiquette and by making sure that other people follow it, thus conformity.
But does this really happen? Yes! I have seen many people reprimanded in their first Facebook forays for misusing their walls. It seems likely that this convention emerged because it reinforces social boundaries and exclusivity, while also ensuring that people are reciprocally active in the extent of their communication. People might just seem lazy if they never took the time to swing by someone else's wall and give it a post or two. (But more than three posts in a row and you'll find yourself breaking another convention altogether!)
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/call-me-ishmael-one-mans-quest-to-hunt.html#comment-8452412284872823462
http://comm245yellow.blogspot.com/2007/10/damn-leviathan.html#comment-7364520950452244741
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3 comments:
Hi you!
I first want to start off by saying that your post was great! Not only was it very well written and explanatory, but it was very funny too!
Moreover, I never really thought of not writing on our own Facebook walls as a “social norm,” but it is actually a perfect example of one. No one wants to be caught writing on their own wall, and when they do sometimes make the mistake, the Leviathan, or all Facebook users as you so well pointed out, reinforces this social norm. Often, when this norm is broken, people will follow up the post with things like, “writing on your own wall? So cool,” or “who writes on their own walls?” It is interesting that this social norm is so engrained within us that I did not even realize it was one before you so cleverly pointed it out.
Additionally, it is interesting to see how quick people are to conform in the Facebook environment, yet the SIDE theory does an excellent job of illustrating why this is true.
Overall, get post! I look forward to reading more.
Brian,
I really enjoyed your post! Facebook does have a great variety of norms and rules, and as a Facebook pro, I am very active in following and enforcing these conventions. It is funny that you picked writing on your own wall to be one of the biggest Facebook offenses. I agree that it is definitely unacceptable, it is probably one of the least common mishaps. The offense is so offensive that mistaken novices immediately learn through “hunting the Leviathan” that they should never do it again. You cited several other Facebook wrongdoings as going against the Leviathan, but still I find people continue to do some of these things despite social conventions. I wonder what makes some people conform to these norms more than others. Thanks for the interesting post!
The cool thing about the social norms of Facebook is how instrumental each of us is in developing them. The fact that a Facebook message is quick and informal is because it filled a need that we had as college students, so we established its use as such. The Facebook wall fills a different role, communicating publicly with someone, in an almost group discussion fashion. As college students, we often use Facebook to keep up with people spread out at universities across the world, and the wall is a good way to let others know that we haven't forgotten about them.
It would be interesting to see how these norms would develop on social networking sites designed for older or younger people. Users who have not yet entered college would see most of their friends everyday, so the wall post could fill a different role. Networking sites for adults might reflect a more formal approach to communication, as they would be more socialized into formal communications.
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