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imomusI recently joined Friendster, the social networking service.
Wait, no, what am I talking about? Friendster is the one we all joined in 2003, the one none of us check into or even mention any more. How embarrassing!
No, I mean Facebook. I recently joined Facebook, the social networking service. The service that came between Friendster and Facebook was MySpace, which was different because you could put music on it. It was dirty because Rupert Murdoch of News International owned it, though, which is why I told my millions of readers at Wired.com to delete their pages. Dozens did.
Wired liked my Committing MySpacecide piece so much that they raised my salary. It defined a whole zeitgeist; it was at least six months ahead of social networking trends (people didn't start deleting MySpace pages until October 2006, by which time the site's ugly page layouts had spawned a new -- and horrible -- school of graphic design).
I joined Facebook because I could no longer remember the reason I hadn't joined Facebook. I also couldn't remember what made it special. If MySpace was different from Friendster because it had music, Facebook was different from MySpace because...
...because it doesn't have music, and because you use your real name, right?
Oh, no, I remember now. It's much better than that. It's not just some gimmick, some increment. It's revolutionary. Facebook is different and better because it has eskimos.
This is the point. This is a great feature. Other networking software is lousy because it's either cluttered with digital ghosts -- people who aren't your friends in real life -- or simply reproduces already-existing real world relationships, making it redundant electronic icing on the cake of real life.
But Facebook -- here's the beauty bit -- connects you to this group of people you'd never otherwise know: the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories.
Did I say "eskimos"? That's not right. That's the kind of thing only a clumsy Facebook newbie would say. The Tlicho people of sub-Arctic Canada aren't eskimos. They're Dene aboriginals, the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Once you could only learn the ways of the Tlicho through exhibitions like Extremes, currently running at Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland.
But now, thanks to Facebook, you can get hourly updates on what your new Tlicho friends are doing. Clue: it isn't what your old, passé internet friends were doing (surfing the internet, mostly). No, your new, highly fashionable Tlicho friends are skinning snowshoe hares, hacking ice holes to fish through, or building a snow house to shelter in when it's minus 40c and a blizzard is approaching. What's more, they're wearing really excellent clothes while doing it.
What I'm really getting at here is that, thanks to Facebook and your new Tlicho friends, for once there's a social networking site that's about difference and The Other. Instead of being phatic and redundant -- "Hi, how're you doing, on the internet? Hey, what a co-incidence, me too!" -- Tlicho Facebook floods you with new information, with strangeness, and with a truly different way of living. That's why it's capturing imagination -- and market share.
Did you know, for instance, that the Tlicho people signed a land claims agreement in 2003 with the Canadian government, and that by 2005 they were controlling all the land between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake? Well, Chief Monfwi -- one of my new Tlicho friends -- just added a Shout to my Wall saying that in 2007 the UN gave the fledgling Tlicho government an award.
Yay Tlicho! Yay Facebook! And yay the internet, always marching forward, always reaching out -- ever ready to face the strange and embrace the stranger!
Wait, no, what am I talking about? Friendster is the one we all joined in 2003, the one none of us check into or even mention any more. How embarrassing!
No, I mean Facebook. I recently joined Facebook, the social networking service. The service that came between Friendster and Facebook was MySpace, which was different because you could put music on it. It was dirty because Rupert Murdoch of News International owned it, though, which is why I told my millions of readers at Wired.com to delete their pages. Dozens did.
Wired liked my Committing MySpacecide piece so much that they raised my salary. It defined a whole zeitgeist; it was at least six months ahead of social networking trends (people didn't start deleting MySpace pages until October 2006, by which time the site's ugly page layouts had spawned a new -- and horrible -- school of graphic design).
I joined Facebook because I could no longer remember the reason I hadn't joined Facebook. I also couldn't remember what made it special. If MySpace was different from Friendster because it had music, Facebook was different from MySpace because...
...because it doesn't have music, and because you use your real name, right?
Oh, no, I remember now. It's much better than that. It's not just some gimmick, some increment. It's revolutionary. Facebook is different and better because it has eskimos.
This is the point. This is a great feature. Other networking software is lousy because it's either cluttered with digital ghosts -- people who aren't your friends in real life -- or simply reproduces already-existing real world relationships, making it redundant electronic icing on the cake of real life.
But Facebook -- here's the beauty bit -- connects you to this group of people you'd never otherwise know: the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories.
Did I say "eskimos"? That's not right. That's the kind of thing only a clumsy Facebook newbie would say. The Tlicho people of sub-Arctic Canada aren't eskimos. They're Dene aboriginals, the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Once you could only learn the ways of the Tlicho through exhibitions like Extremes, currently running at Edinburgh's National Museum of Scotland.
But now, thanks to Facebook, you can get hourly updates on what your new Tlicho friends are doing. Clue: it isn't what your old, passé internet friends were doing (surfing the internet, mostly). No, your new, highly fashionable Tlicho friends are skinning snowshoe hares, hacking ice holes to fish through, or building a snow house to shelter in when it's minus 40c and a blizzard is approaching. What's more, they're wearing really excellent clothes while doing it.
What I'm really getting at here is that, thanks to Facebook and your new Tlicho friends, for once there's a social networking site that's about difference and The Other. Instead of being phatic and redundant -- "Hi, how're you doing, on the internet? Hey, what a co-incidence, me too!" -- Tlicho Facebook floods you with new information, with strangeness, and with a truly different way of living. That's why it's capturing imagination -- and market share.
Did you know, for instance, that the Tlicho people signed a land claims agreement in 2003 with the Canadian government, and that by 2005 they were controlling all the land between Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake? Well, Chief Monfwi -- one of my new Tlicho friends -- just added a Shout to my Wall saying that in 2007 the UN gave the fledgling Tlicho government an award.
Yay Tlicho! Yay Facebook! And yay the internet, always marching forward, always reaching out -- ever ready to face the strange and embrace the stranger!
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 05:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 06:58 am (UTC)http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228133160
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 07:08 am (UTC)I have a facebook account, and a myspace too, and when I move to Bolivia next month I'll stay friends with the people I know who still live in the US--though the friendships will be maintained almost exclusively through facebook and myspace, I imagine.
sefano
Date: 2008-08-23 08:45 am (UTC)big ray
Date: 2008-08-23 09:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 09:52 am (UTC)i was just about to make my own facebook post this morning.
i tried it once a long time ago and Hated it.
started up my profile again last week.
discovered that its not about _actual_ friends
but networking
more like Pokemon, gotta collect them all!
now lemme at those Eskimos!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 02:37 pm (UTC)And Momus--which profile is the real you? There seem to be impostors...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 11:14 am (UTC)Second mistake was adding people indiscriminately (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/21/comment.digitalmedia), people I don't even know of any level, people who'd never even messaged me. My profile soon became a sea of people I didn't know who made no effort to even engage with me.
Third mistake was mixing work circles, family circles and social circles all in one place. I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personalities, but there are reasons (http://www.nowpublic.com/how_facebook_can_get_you_fired) to keep these 3 traditionally distinct groups separate from each other.
I'll eventually delete my current facebook profile and reappear sometime in the future and do it properly this time round. Or maybe not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook).
I have a Mixi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixi) account which I'm pretty chuffed about though, since as of April this year it's pretty much impossible for foreigners to join since you now need not only an invitation from someone on there but a Japanese mobile email account. Mixi's a great social network to be part of if you're interested in Japan since it's Japan most popular site by far with some 19 mil users, and it's full of everyday photos, journal entries and videos from all over the Japanese archipelago.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 11:31 am (UTC)Difficult in 1978, pretty much impossible in 2008. I'm told it's impossible to delete a Facebook account, only deactivate it.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 12:53 pm (UTC)In any case, you should have right of access to any data they keep about you.
From a technical standpoint there should be no reason why they can't delete a profile, or at least fill in the fields on their database with null values.
Sadly we live in a world where data is being collected for the sake of it (at least I hope that's the only reason!). We need to get spiky about our personal data and start kicking up if we don't like something that's going on.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 03:14 pm (UTC)Even if you think you're fairly uncomplicated irl, you can end up having to compartmentalise your life online in order not to cause offline problems. I don't think it's paranoid, not when everything you say online remains crystalised, no matter how much you personally change and learn and grow. Something that seems natural, prudent and even considerate irl -- like, idk, not discussing sex or geeky/fannish subjects with certain friends (or with your boss!) -- suddenly becomes a devious act because, instead of simply not doing something in some situations, you may have to create a separate identity in order to carry on being something like yourself. Long term, perhaps it'll lead to less censorious, more realistic attitudes to human behaviour, but stand by for more stone-casting before then.
(I have this image in my mind of online communities of mostly pretty innocuous, even likeable, Mr and Ms Hydes talking to one another).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-24 03:15 am (UTC)Still, there's always, erm, Sexi.
http://sexi-sns.net/
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-24 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 11:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 01:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 03:28 pm (UTC)Adam
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 03:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 04:12 pm (UTC)Deleting myspace, joining facebook... is momus a class traitor?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 05:45 pm (UTC)The amounts of internet-n00bery in that sentence make me want to hurl. I had to close the window and re-open it it was that bad.
This WHOLE POST reminds me of why I ignore all conventional media and about 99% of people in the world. Oh god now I have to go troll something.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 05:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 07:35 pm (UTC)I use Facebook to stay in touch with some friends/acquaintances that I can't convince to join LJ - evidently much of Facebook's attraction lies in it's popularity.
I'm personally really getting to hate it, perhaps it is down to the platform's format but for some reason the level of intelligent interaction on it seldom rises above that attained by the Wright brothers Flyer...
I can imagine that in brief time you may revert to MySpacecide mode.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-23 07:58 pm (UTC)If you will be my friend I will beat up the troll-bullies and give you their lunch money..
the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-23 08:09 pm (UTC)Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-23 08:50 pm (UTC)Your correction doesn't avoid the euphemism treadmill, or the ambiguity that the Inuit are "natives" too (indigenous). I prefer a de-stigmatized use of terms like "eskimo" and "redskin" than a jump to new, muddy terms which -- should the stigma remain -- will inevitably become awkward in their turn. The thing to change is not labels, but status itself: semi-autonomy and self-government are a good start.
Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-23 08:52 pm (UTC)Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-23 11:28 pm (UTC)Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-24 12:04 am (UTC)And would you like to consider that guilt-by-association is what you're doing both when you compare me to Prince Philip, and when you strongly imply that there's something inherently, unalterably appalling about being an eskimo?
Language -- rather than, say, self-government, or the simple assumption that other ways of living have dignity -- will solve everything, won't it, my friend? Keep changing those labels, and changing them again, and...
Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-24 04:32 am (UTC)Examples might be the third world to today's emerging nations. But if the Canadian eskimo decide to call themselves "The People" or Inuit it would be appropriate to do so considering the relevance of their choice for self determination.
Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-24 04:42 am (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit
Re: the most northerly redskins before you hit eskimo territory.
Date: 2008-08-24 06:55 am (UTC)"No universal replacement term for Eskimo, inclusive of all Inuit and Yupik people, is accepted across the geographical area inhabited by the Inuit and Yupik peoples. The primary reason that Eskimo is considered derogatory is the false perception that it means "eaters of raw meat"."
Re-employing a term never properly replaced and pejorative only because of a misconception is a useful way to avoid absurdities like "the area where the people who call themselves "the people" in their own language meets a different area where different people also call themselves "the people" in a different language".
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-24 04:06 am (UTC)I like the simplicity of the Facebook interface and I like that it so rarely if ever breaks down. And you can have music and video if you like, you just have to add on the right application for it.
I only kept Myspace to communicate with a few specific people who were unreachable otherwise and then used the blog feature essentially as hard drive space for articles and strange thoughts I wanted saved. It was pretty surprising when I found out people were actually reading the thing.
Re: Honoring Maggie Kindschuh
Date: 2008-08-27 03:44 pm (UTC)Count Kucherkokov
Date: 2008-08-24 11:54 pm (UTC)