Assignment #6 Hunting the Leviathan

Hunting the Leviathan refers to finding the enforcing power that causes people to adhere to society’s norms and standards. Although some are obvious, such as laws and policies, others are not as noticeable. These subtle powers include traditions, norms, and group culture. Although not written in stone, many can be learned through simple observation.

Due to the Facebook revolution, a variety of social norms have been created. They all revolve around the common theme of befriending another individual. Although Facebook has become the most useful and public tool when trying to “stalk” someone, one can still take it too far. When you meet someone in class for the first time and only share your first name, it is often weird and freaky when you go home after class to discover they have already asked you to be their friend on facebook.

The art of Facebook-friending is very delicate, as one false move can have detrimental effects. In the example illustrated earlier, if one feels as though they are getting stalked, they can simply refuse to accept the other as a friend. If he or she still feels their privacy is threatened, they can add the “stalker” to a list of blocked individuals. Through the website’s privacy settings, a participant of this site can decide what, if any, information can be viewed by selected others.

If you were the “friender”, your purely innocent action of asking someone’s permission to be their friend (weird to think about), has now totally backfired. After getting slammed with a rejection, and possible blocked visibility of their profile, that person will learn to not be so intense next time around. The learned group norm would be to wait until you get more information, so one’s execution of examining all mutual friends’ pictures to find one with her in it isn’t exposed.

Facebook friending is right in line with the SIDE theory. The first aspect, social identity, raises the question of group versus individual salience. In the world of Facebook, group identity is salient because many goals of joining facebook and displaying personal information is to belong to a “cool” social network where everyone displays how hip and popular they are. The second aspect is the deindividuation effect, which discusses how certain conditions promote loss of self-awareness. Facebook adheres to this on some level-besides voluntarily posting pictures there is visual anonymity. The SIDE theory states that the combination of group identity salience and visual anonymity leads to members relating more within the group, conformity to norms, and increased social influence. Facebook is a place where people relate to others by creating interest groups, conform to norms (friending, wall posting, picture tagging), and are socially influenced (by caring about their various online statuses).