Why do people join Facebook? What does it provide for self-esteem, cognition, and free will? In this blog post, I will try to explore how a social networking system can create an identity crisis, a loner, and an existential doubt. By offering a medium of self expression other than physical reality, it convolutes the mind into believing in an intertwined dualism existing between virtual and real. With this paired existence, one must compete with oneself to prioritize which image of their self they wish to portray, the real or the “enhanced” real. Then by isolating one, they abandon the other, thus creating a vacuum in which their beliefs cannot readily cross one realm or the other without a necessary transitory conversion. Essentially, through Facebook exists a metaphysical dilemma between reality and “surreality” where the self assumes a new identity.
First, we have the mind as a whole. Assuming there is an overlying cognitive, self-willed decision-maker, then one may judge accordingly that he/she is in control of his/her actions. With that being said, we would assume free will of the mind and control of one’s own actions. Now we have decisions being made, in real time. Or are they? In a normal interactive scenario, the agent would utilize his/her mental capacities to make a decision for the moment of the interaction (disregarding any delay in thought processing). But, in the Facebook interaction, every action or thought can be delayed, diluted, redirected, reversed, undone, or even nullified. What does this do to the individual?
Paradoxically, Facebook offers the promise of finding yourself through expression, having hundreds of “friends” and truly belonging in a world where Facebook is reality’s greatest sidekick. But, taking a look deeper, Facebook can have profound effects on thought processing and will-to-action. Whereas a phone conversation, letter, or face-to-face interaction requires immediate agency, Facebook indulges its users with the façade of the time gap. This in small quantities is no metaphysical dilemma as much as it is a nuisance to reality. But when multiplied across by events, status updates, picture changes, comments, games, pokes, messages, advertising, groups, etc., then there becomes a second reality in which the mind’s internal clock must be calibrated to function accurately. If this calibration were to fail, and the agent should act on Facebook in real-time, then the consequences can be overwhelming.
Take for example a couple who just changed their Facebook relationship status to “It’s complicated.” From a Facebook user’s perspective, this seems vague and controversial. But translate this into reality and the disillusionment is amplified. You don’t want to approach the couple without a clear indication of their relationship status else you’d appear inconsiderate. The situation becomes a psychological puzzle. You start viewing them differently in real life because of a vague situation created in Facebook. This was just one scenario in which a happening on Facebook strained the understanding of reality. Multiply this by every other communication mechanism on Facebook and you have an excess of input and strain on your mental capacities to filter what’s unimportant and translate what’s encrypted. Failure to do so will create an alternate reality, the Facebook realm, coexisting with the real interaction. I call this the Facebook dilemma.
How can one both exist naturally and exist alternately on Facebook? Sure enough, there are dissimilarities and notable separations, but the problem which I wished to expose was that there is also an alternate reality. This Facebook reality is abject to us: it captures reality in a mimicked fashion and skews it so that we see life through different lenses. It is in this fashion that we are contorted by the influx of Facebook feedback and faced yet again with questioning the authenticity of the self in reality.
My final point was cleverly written out before I erased it and replaced it with the sentence that you are reading now. This component of the Facebook dilemma features the undo function: the ability to reverse, undo, or delete almost anything you do on Facebook. No longer do people need to think before they talk if there is a function which can erase what was said with merely one click. What does this mean for the self? One way to quite understand this is to imagine having a conversation with someone. You ask her a question and await her response. Then, when she is talking, as you assume because her mouth is moving, you hear nothing come out. You look upon her quizzically as this strange phenomenon occurs. Then her mouth stops and you hear the response and usually all is well. But for the few moments of phenomenon, you were lost, confused and curious as to what was being said. This is similar to the words of a person being deleted before being sent to you. There is also the case where the words are sent, but immediately deleted later, but the two cases are nearly identical for the sake of this argument.
These words were bits of consciousness streamed onto the keyboard and into data on a computer. The real doubt arises when you try to figure out what was trying to be said. Surely you can cast the matter aside, but words that existed and that could have been meant for you were held captive and disintegrated before you were even able to cast your own judgment on their value. Simply, you were robbed of your thinking capacities and manipulated by the other person to believe that the words you ultimately read were meant all along.
This runs into several problems of its own. Like, what am I reading on Facebook that is really significant? How much of this was cleverly thought of before reaching their wall? What were they originally writing before they erased it and replaced it with this message? The answers to these questions may overwhelmingly lead to dead ends or irrelevancies. But one may never know because the opportunity to think was controlled by a person thousands of miles away.
To think this way is to think like a madman. It’s dangerous and unhealthy. Which is why when we ask “What were you saying?” we may often get the response “don’t worry about it.” But what you see in a blog post may or may not be what was originally intended in the mind of the blogger, who knows? What you can do is judge based on what you see, and know for yourself that you are using your mental capacities to evaluate your self’s integrity. Sometimes the safest way is the simplest way, but if we allow our senses to guide us, then we may not give ourselves the opportunity to exercise our free will of mind, so it’s as if it doesn’t exist. That’s why it would never hurt to peek a little more into a situation and gather information to make educated conclusions of matters for yourself. After all, it’s because we can think for ourselves that our individual self exists, no matter how manipulated it may be. “Cogito ergo sum” –Descartes.
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