Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Detournment article


 Facebook is watching you

            The initial success of the Internet was partly based on the marvelous anonymity it provided for its users.  Creating an anonymous identity turned into an art, resulting in many clever nicknames and avatars.  Complete anonymity empowered users; they could completely re-create themselves online and essentially start a new life, leaving all the complications, limitations and insecurities of reality behind.  The internet didn't aim to emulate real life social relationships and patterns, rather it was meant to be a fantastical place where users could be completely free and uninhibited.
            So what changed?  People wanted more personalization and self expression.  People wanted to share their identities, interests and ideas with others in an authentic way. Anonymity had its benefits but human narcissistic desire could not be quenched by creating a fake sensational online identity, pretending to be a hot 22 year old Brazilian in a chat room.  The online realm was polluted by scammers and hackers and communicating with other faceless individuals could sometimes feel meaningless and impersonal.  The internet was missing truth, reality.  And that is precisely what Facebook planned to deliver to its 500 million users—the transcription of social relationships from the real world to the virtual world.  Facebook provided a very adaptable platform to connect to other people.  Communication was no longer restricted to e-mail messages and posting on forums.  Users could browse through profiles of fellow peers, witness new friendships being formed and see guest lists for events they're planning to attend.  Humans are social animals, gossip mongers and peeping toms and Facebook has capitalized on all of them. 
            Almost everyone has a Facebook account.  It has become the norm to end a conversation with “add me on facebook” instead of getting a new acquaintance's phone number.  It has dissolved social boundaries and privacy that would exist in real life.  The Facebook generation has become accustomed to knowing everything about everyone.  It's inappropriate to stare into your neighbor's window but that's precisely what we're doing.  We have turned into spectators of the worst kind—voyeurs who constantly yearn to be stimulated from yet another person commenting on their status or profile picture.  We are thrilled from seeing new notifications and feel a kind of sedated pleasure from looking through pictures of people we've never met. The Facebook newsfeed is the equivalent of the town shrew always on the look out for fresh gossip or a neighborhood watch program.  We live in constant mutual surveillance and incessant judgment.  It is possible to know the most vital, basic statistics about a person after a single encounter.  Information that would have taken several interactions to discover are now readily available for the world to see.  We have been replaced by our profiles.  Social relations are essentially run through a catalog where individuals can look up people according to school, location, interests etc.  Is it really necessary to know so much about people one hardly talks to? 
            Facebook has successfully perpetuated human consciousness.  It owns everything a user uploads on its site and makes it impossible to delete one's account unless one does it manually.  In essence, Facebook owns its users.  500 million members feed this 50 billion dollar company.  Facebook has become a ubiquitous presence in our society that has become the platform to serve a very important human need, communication.  Now that the institution has been firmly cemented in our minds, it is impossible to turn back.  We are feeding this corporation that has millions and millions of user data and  trillions of bytes of information.  We have sold our souls to Facebook., becoming slaves to a system that has yet to be tested on its levels of trust and honesty.  We have willingly handed ourselves on a  platter to a plethora of advertisers, waiting to be attacked and bombarded with advertisements specifically catered with uncanny precision to our demographic and interests.
            The most impressive part of the whole debacle is that its users probably didn't even think twice before sharing their entire lives on the internet.  Most people assume it's harmless.  What's the big deal in sharing one's favorite movies, music, hobbies, education and work place?  It is precisely the meat that corporations and agencies want in marketing among other uses.  Facebook is fairly new and we have yet to realize its holistic effects on society.  The Facebook corporation has an extremely large responsibility in managing users' privacy and keeping their data secure.  When one posts a status or wall post, little thought is given to what happens afterward.  Sure, someone likes your status and makes a funny comment.  But imagine 500 million users all uploading information, every day for years?  The amount of data that Facebook owns is incomprehensible and lends tremendous power to the organization. 
            My detournement project seeks to demonstrate how Facebook can be likened to a “Big Brother” of sorts.  We have readily offered information and implicitly agreed to be monitored both by the corporation as well as our peers or Facebook friends.  I imposed the Facebook logo over the image's original “Big Brother” text to read “Facebook is watching you.” It should invoke a sense that Facebook is omnipresent and extremely powerful; one's every move is being monitored and recorded.  Facebook has complete power over its users, despite its assertions that content is controlled by its users and not its programmers.  They ultimately are the owners of the information uploaded, not the people themselves.  We hand ourselves over to the corporation along with our profile pictures, status updates and friend records.  A website has access to valuable information about not only our profiles but our habits of use and activity patterns.  These are rich data that could be analyzed to reveal significant things about Facebook users.  It is unknown what the website can do with this information and its intentions. 
            Symbolically, Facebook can be likened to God, enveloping us and having a significant amount of power over us.  The website has evolved into this massive, wildly successful beyond belief organization that has tremendously affected the way humans relate to one another.  We have projected ourselves online, driven by an incessant need to continuously reinforce our self indulgence via updates.  Perhaps we should be wary of how much of ourselves we put online.  The detournement project could possibly be seen as a warning then, a reminder that the internet provides a false sense of security and we shouldn't let our guard down.  A website has unwillingly caused so many secrets to spill in the very public domain of the internet. 
            The concept of Big Brother can also be compared to the constant surveillance that Facebook enables.  Users log in to watch and review each other, which can essentially be reduced to spying.  Facebook has provided a free, extremely easy platform for people to keep track of each others' every thought, every party they attend and every new person that they meet.  Vital statistics are shared carelessly in the absence of any meaningful exchange.  It seems appalling but our generation has evolved into one that doesn't concern itself too much with self disclosure; the more open you are the better.  This generation prides itself in keeping records.
            First we must recognize the spectacle.  According to Debord, "all that was once directly lived has become mere representation.”  This could not be truer in the case of Facebook, as it is the exemplary prototype of everything that Debord was against.  Users do not view Facebook as a Big Brother figure, rather they see it as a tool to express themselves and connect with friends.  Facebook represents itself as the foremost platform to network with others on the internet.  It's homepage states that it helps you “connect and share with the people in your life.”  It has a new check-in feature which lets users proclaim where they've been and with whom.  There are a multitude ways users can let the whole world know of their activities.  Likening Facebook to Big Brother negates its value as a helpful tool and instead morphs it into an imposing and formidable villain.  It maintains an ever vigilant supervision of its unsuspecting members. 
            Upon closer inspection, we realize that we have handed over a lot of power to the spectacle.  We are content with living through representation.  Technology has been promoted to help society but in actuality, society has become its slave, scrambling to consume and inundate itself with illusory representation.  Facebook users feel very empowered as they are equipped and enabled with a myriad features to “connect” with people.  This has propagated a cycle of illusion where the more time one spends on Facebook, the more isolated one becomes from reality, reinforcing the spectacle.  In this way, users have handed themselves over to a corporation and likened themselves to zoo animals, letting spectators come and ogle at them via the means of a profile. 
            By using Debord's methods of first identifying the spectacle and then devaluating it, I have produced my Detournement project.  I established that the spectacle like qualities of Facebook, announcing it to be virtual reality, isolating its users and rendering them helpless to detach themselves from the phenomenon.  Detournement requires the means and end to be one and the same, therefore using the very fundamental premise of Facebook as a tool or conducive social agent, it had to be negated within itself, using its own innate qualities.  It produces false dichotomy when it pretends to promote singularity among the user and peers. 
            Debord would have been abhorred by society's dependence on Facebook today.  He would have urged us to inspect it and devaluate it into its simplest form, thereby exposing its vanity and changing its meaning.  Individuals have been numbed although they falsely believe themselves to be empowered. Relationships can be dissected into images, groups and comments, innately lacking deep meaning or significance to its owners.  We are increasingly becoming superficial and dependent on this type of representation.  The spectacle is winning for now but perhaps in the future, users will realize the profound consequences of their overindulging self-disclosure and stop feeding Big Brother.
           
             
           

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