The Modern Journalist

Desocializing Social Networks

My friend Chris just posted this Washington Post article to Twitter, and I thought I’d blog a bit about it before I left.

The piece — Friends Indeed? — looks at the social networking from a different perspective than those of us who are steeped in it normally discuss: the downsides to having your life lived entirely in a virtual and public environment. For every old friend who ends up finding you on a social network, so can every nutter and shut in (as we affectionately called them at Technology Review.)

The Post story has a series of creep-outs, which we all do. When I was dating my last girlfriend, her ex- had a friend write me a note telling me how cute and smart I was, and that possibly we could meet sometime to discuss my work. I did a little digging (I’ve known too many women to believe that was how she was going to talk to me) and found the connection. I replied that I’d love to — and in fact, I could bring my girlfriend, who it appeared she knew.

That started a precipitous backpeddling on her part (apparently, I wasn’t as smart or cute anymore) and a fun confrontation in real life with the ex.

Social networking can go wrong in two very specific instances:

The first is when people run around adding as many followers as they can in order to boost their visibility online. It’s one thing to promote a product or idea: I follow Diablo Cody on MySpace because I like reading her blogs about life in Hollywood. I’m under no illusion that we are friends. Nor do I think she associates friendship with her blog. Her massive friend list is simply a result of her fame.

For the Internet famous, though, adding friends is like an obsessive need. They must reach the top of the most-influential lists. But this is really quite different from the likes of Diablo Cody, who doesn’t court the online presence. It is — and I can’t believe I’m using this word — a more pure interaction.

The second is when people do what my former girlfriend’s ex- did. When we court and use social networking as a tool for harassing people, it becomes a very awkward endeavor. Of course, harassed online is much easier to deal with since a click of the button or a block here and there and you can run most folks off. However, I’d venture to guess that many of these awkward online interactions end up playing out in the public sphere in ways that wouldn’t have happened before this instant access.

I’m sure there are more nefarious ways social media plays out. For me — and I suspect for other early adopters — there is an expectation that strange things will happen when you become a “public” figure by engaging in this type of media. So you plan and prepare for it. You mediate what you say and what you do most of the time.

For the masses, though, that’s likely not a good solution.