All right, so let's just get down to it and admit it. All of us, more than likely, are addicts. Drug of choice? Facebook and/or Twitter. They've both infected most anything and everything we do! I know that, personally, one of the top things I do in the morning is to make sure I check my Facebook, just in case I got a notification over night. I mean, this is right up there with brushing my teeth and taking a shower! And now, I suppose I may be on the track to becoming addicted to Twitter. I've never liked Twitter, but peer pressure has forced me to create an account anyway. I can't just ignore the site anymore--a sentiment that none other than John Mayer, platinum musician.
You see, Gary Graff wrote this article recently called "John Mayer's a prolific composer...of tweets". In it, Graff highlights Mayer's relationship with the social networking site in the past year. He didn't like the site at first, finding it to be silly and dumb. But, inevitably, he couldn't just ignore it. The site has become his top means of communication with all his fans, and he has become quite the expert at Tweeting. The entire second half of the article consists entirely of the best of John Mayer's tweets in 2009.
Though short and sweet, this article is truly disconcerting to me.
Facebook and Twitter, as well as all the other social networking sites that have led up to them, are both subjects of a process known as "normalization". Normalization is really a pattern of definitions and or narratives that are repeated so many times, no one can (or bothers to, really) contradict them any longer. How many times have you seen it been said that Facebook and Twitter have simply become part of our lives? That both sites are here for the long haul, so we might as well get used to them and benefit from them however possible?
The answer is probably a lot. The Facebook/Twitter vs. Real Life Interaction debate is almost everywhere today.
I think this article takes the normalization to the next step, though, practically installing Tweeting and Facebooking as a value in society. After all, if even a famous person can't seem to escape their clutches, how are we "normal" people going to avoid it? John Mayer didn't like Twitter, but it sucked him in anyway. He couldn't avoid it, if he wanted to stay in touch with his fans regularly. So, really...why should we avoid it?
Now this process of giving something value in our culture and declaring it a norm is a part of another process called socialization. In the Media/Society, socialization is the process by which we learn and internalize the values, beliefs and norms of culture and develope a sense of self. How long is it going to take before people start to define themselves through Facebook and Twitter?
That, my readers, is the question.
At this rate, it seems that people will soon be glued to their computer screens, tweeting about themselves every half hour or les and Facebook-stalking every second. We could be reduced to great, big lumps, sitting in front of a computer screen all day, intent on finding the next big fan page or the next big application on Facebook. Do we really want to let it come to that? Do we really want to even let it get close to that? I sure don't, but all these stories about Facebook seem to be okay with it. They seem to think we'll be just fine sitting in front of computers all day, because, hey, famous people like John Mayer do it. So...we should too, right?
I don't think so. But...what do you think?
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"After all, if even a famous person can't seem to escape their clutches, how are we "normal" people going to avoid it?"
ReplyDeleteThat's a good question...I've actually wondered whether celebrities are paid to promote Twitter at all, because I've hear a lot about what celebrities have joined, etc. Do you know whether there are any paid promoters like that?