Mediaboss Marketing

I saw Jesse Eisenberg on 114th the other day. I dont bring this up to brag, since as a New Yorker, I obviously dont give special attention to celebrities, but only because I was with my friend, who apparently confused Eisenberg with his Social Network counterpart Mark Zuckerberg (thus making it a far more interesting story to the people she told).

The faux Zuckerberg sighting got me thinking, mostly about how crazy it is that he was in our shoesan undergraduate at an elite universityas recently as 2004, which really doesnt seem like that long ago. The year is still vivid in my memory, mostly because the Sox broke the Curse, and its insane to consider that in that short time, the social world has completely changed.

It wasnt all him, either. Zuckerberg was a kind of Hegelian world-historical individualhe was just an agent of the world (networking) spirit (bam). In fact, one of Facebooks early rivals was created by a SEAS class president who was trying to invigorate Columbias school spiritso I suppose it was doomed from the start. The social revolution was inevitable.

Its hard to gain perspective on a revolution while its still happening, especially since we came of age right at the advent of social networking. Its pretty difficult for me to imagine the social world even pre-Myspace, although admittedly Ive mostly blocked 2003 out of my memory (Aaron fucking Boone).

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, LinkedIn, recently deceased but once powerful sites such as Livejournal, Digg, and Flickr, even texting to some extent and smartphones to a large extentthese are all part of the social networking revolution. They control our lives more than we realize, or at least more than we would like to admit. Ive probably checked Facebook 10 times in the course of writing this, and my iPhone has buzzed with just as many notifications (to which I always have an intense Pavlovian reaction).

Facebook & Co. are more than a procrastination tool, though. Social networking has truly changed the way humans interact with each other. It has led to developments which have undoubtedly improved the worlds ability to connect with and organize larger groups of people, and the ability to share information.

Still, I wouldnt necessarily call social networking a net positive. Its no coincidence that Facebook was created by a man described by more reputable sources than Aaron Sorkin as socially awkward, overprogrammed, and robotic. Social networking truly seems like it was created by someone who hates human interaction, who reduced it to an algorithm and completely removed the human aspect. Popularity is measured in likes and followers, our moods are determined from our status updates, and every social action is methodically recorded and made public, to be judged by our friends.

Most of us have a core group of friends and family, and the way we interact with them will (hopefully) never change, but social networking has changed how we interact with everyone else. Its become immensely easier to maintain superficial friendships. In the past, you had to make an effort to maintain a relationship with someone you didnt see regularly. Now, we can decide who to consider a friend by noting who writes on our walls for our birthday or who has a cursory conversation with us on chat every other month.

Dunbars numberwhich says we can handle knowing and keeping contact with at most 150 peopleis seemingly being shattered, but our cognitive ability to maintain stable relationships with larger groups of people isnt necessarily improving. Were just having increasingly superficial and uniform relationships with larger groups of people.

Social networking goes deeper, though, since it appeals to our natural impulse to share. We crave validation, and nothing is more powerful than shared experiences. In the past, when we shared experiences with each other, it was much more personal and meaningfulmostly occurring face-to-face, or at least in the much more meaningful medium of letters or even phone calls.

Link:
The social network