Bowling Online
I’m sitting in a hip local coffee house, staring at the dust-coated screen of my PowerBook G4. I’m sitting alone. Browsing photos. Posting on walls. Chatting.
About a minute ago, I got a Facebook message from my mom in New York.
“xoxo,” it said.
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The most pervasive critique of Facebook – made implicitly by Aaron Sorkin (age 49) in his screenplay for The Social Network and explicitly by several important observers of our age – is that it replaces meaningful human communication with shallow online interaction. In other words, the so-called Social Network is in fact an insidious medium for anti-social behavior. To highlight this irony, Sorkin and director David Fincher (48) have forged a creation myth for Facebook that portrays Mark Zuckerberg as an Asperger’s-afflicted social outcast who, despite making a million online friends, can’t sustain a single personal relationship in real life. It hardly matters that people who’ve actually interacted with the real Zuckerberg, both personally and professionally, refute this portrait as complete hooey. Sorkin’s assessment of Facebook’s creators – “a group of, in one way or another, socially dysfunctional people who created the world’s great social-networking site” – gives critics who don’t understand Facebook themselves a perfectly packaged talking point upon which to construct their requisite 800 words.
Perhaps fearing that Facebook’s inherent irony was not being parsed with sufficient intellectual rigor, Malcolm Gladwell (47) has entered the fray. Gladwell published an article in the New Yorker accusing online networking sites of not living up to the legacy of social organizing that spurred the Civil Rights Movement. Facebook and its ilk, he argues, are premised on weak social ties – removed, remote connections. Affecting real, MLK-level social change requires physical sacrifice, and that only comes from strong ties – personal, meaningful relationships. Gladwell’s concern is that popularity online creates the illusion of power – power to make a difference, to affect people and events – yet that popularity, that sense of connectedness, is itself an illusion.
The disdain for Facebook underlying both Sorkin’s film and Gladwell’s article stems from a familiar quadragenarian gripe: the good ol’ days are gone. Sorkin recently quipped, “I’ve heard of Facebook, in the same way I’ve heard of a carburetor… if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn’t know how to find it.” It’s a classic conservative stance. It’s also an understandable one – even to us progressive youngsters for whom Facebook is a discernible, useful entity. The truth is, nobody likes having to rely on the Internet to get in touch. My cousin is 14 years old. She’s never known a world without instantaneous online communication. She’s on Google Buzz constantly, ferociously – it’s terrifying. And yet when I finally “comment” on a particular buzz, her reply – from 1,000 miles away – says: “miss u, unc! when you coming to visit? wish u were here.”
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These feelings of longing indicate what’s really afoot: online social networking isn’t replacing human interaction; it’s attempting rather earnestly to fill a deep void in personal connections with a cruelly inadequate substitute.
Social ties in America have been weakening since long before Facebook. It’s been fifteen years since Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone) first argued that social participation in America was on the decline. Examining data dating back to the 1960s, Putnam illustrated a consistent trend in our daily lives: from political organizations to fraternities, from religious groups to bowling leagues, Americans were consistently engaging in less formalized social interactions than their predecessors.
One could argue that Facebook and Twitter are hastening this decline – though I haven’t seen any pundits pointing to empirical evidence to make the case. Yet it seems more likely that Facebook isn’t simply a cause of weak social ties but, more disturbingly, a symptom of them. We don’t chat online instead of seeing our friends at the local coffee shop; we chat online because when we go to the hip local coffee shop, nobody there knows our name.
Gladwell writes that Facebook couldn’t have helped facilitate the events in Montgomery in 1955: “of what use would a digital communication tool be in a town where ninety-eight per cent of the black community could be reached every Sunday morning at church?” Which is exactly right: in that scenario, Facebook would be of no use at all. But the vast majority of Americans today don’t live in that scenario. We haven’t lived in that scenario for some time. We live in a world where many of the people we love are far away, not close; where community is amorphous and ephemeral. And yes, Facebook can’t replicate or replace the ties that bind us when we smell and taste and feel each other. But it’s not Facebook’s fault I don’t live in the same city as my mom. And sometimes I miss her, and I’m glad she owns a computer.
Totally agree. I have friends and family in 3 continents and sometimes its nice to be able to talk to them, and generally our conversations are about what we’re going to do when we see each other again. And actually, it makes those connections more meaningful because missing someone and longing to see them is an important indicator that the relationship is meaningful.
I also disagree with Gladwell’s notion that facebook/twitter are useless in building social change. a few years ago in Chile there was a student uprising for free lunches and reduced entrance exam fees for poorer students and reduced bus fare for all students regardless of income. My brother was in Chile and saw this from beginning to end, and it was quite literally a street fight. And what was the students primary weapon? Cell phones, text messages and facebook. With those tools they would set rallying points, post police movements and (more importantly) post their demands for the world to see as well as post updates on their negotiations with the government. It was a flash revolt made possible by everyone involved having a cell phone and facebook account. So while he’s right in that it’s not helpful when 98% of your audience is in a church, what if 98% of your audience is online?
Thanks for the comments, SweetLou. I didn’t go into it in the post, but Gladwell has gotten some significant pushback over the issue of whether online networking can effect social change. The best piece I’ve read has been Leo Mirani’s in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/oct/02/malcolm-gladwell-social-networking-kashmir.
Really enjoyed this post. It bugs me when psuedo-intellectuals like Gladwell and other aging children of the 60′s whine about social-networking sites. Intelligent people our age realize that Facebook is nothing more than entertainment and a way to keep in touch with friends/family living far away. It’s not replacing or in any way diminishing our need for interpersonal contact. And it’s not some all-powerful media/advertising tool that can change the way we think. As you said, it’s just nice to be able to say hey to people you haven’t seen in a while.
I don’t know why we should listen to children of the fifties and sixties about how to do much of anything. What a fucked up society they grew up in. Any societal problems we have now were there, if not worse, in the fifties/sixties; we are just honest about them.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10391416-93.html
And on a personal note, I use Facebook for two purposes: first, to strengthen relationships through shared items of interest or commentary and secondly, to organize social events. It’s true, I don’t go places like bars or coffee shops (or church for that matter) with the intent of meeting new people, but when I do meet new people, Facebook is a nice, relaxed arena where I can present myself and inspect the new person without feeling either boastful or intrusive. Frequently my interactions with real made-of-meat people begin with the pre-installed ice breaker of something posted on thefacebook.com and move forward into real conversation.
My personal philosophy is to embrace any means of communication. If technology provides us with an avenue to share information, we should take it.
Anyway, great post – I very much enjoyed reading it and the thinking it inspired me to do.
While I hesitate to use the word “watershed,” Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone” (from which this post derives it’s title) was actually a very influential book in the world of sociology when it came out–particularly among circles of people who love to bat around the term “civil society.”
Hi Jonah,
Thanks for your comments. I’ll address them one at a time.
1. I think your summary of Gladwell’s piece – “a counterargument to overweening, obnoxious Facebook triumphalists regarding its power for political organization?” – is accurate. I also think Gladwell’s refutation is somewhat accurate. People have been overstating the importance of Facebook since its creation. Pundits like Clay Shirkey are far too eager to see in Facebook an orgasm-inducing revolutionary social tool. I think it’s worth noting that many of these triumphalist pundits, including Shirkey, are in their forties as well. I don’t mean to be ageist – but I am suggesting that the discussion taking place in the public sphere right now about Facebook and social networking seems to be dominated by people who misunderstand how Facebook is actually being used. I think Gladwell’s piece only adds further to people’s misconceptions. Why bring up Montgomery and Birmingham? This tactic evidences an implicit belief that Facebook is replacing social networks – he’s basically arguing that Facebook doesn’t incentivize people to take bold action the way face-to-face contact does. Which is true (if obvious). But saying it isn’t going to bring back the social networks that existed in black churches in the South in the 1950s. And Gladwell offers no alternate course of action to motivate people politically. If he really wanted to use his public platform and giant word count to effect change, he could begin by figuring out how we’re going to mobilize strong revolutionary movements when people are spread out and disconnected from one another. As SweetLou points out above, at least online networking has some use in this regard.
2. You’re right that I don’t devote as much space as I might have to defending my “filling the void” argument. I can only hold up my hands and sigh that 800 words is not a lot of words. To this end, I sympathize with the movie critics linked in the piece.
For the record, though, Will is correct: Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone was a pretty big deal. The original article was one of the most cited pieces in academia in the 1990s. It spawned a best-selling book, a special initiative at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and a ton of research by other people in numerous academic fields (check out Theda Skocpol and Elizabeth Clemens, for starters). If you have further questions about the decline of American civic engagement since the 1960s, I’d direct you to the preexisting literature.
Finally, I’m happy to hear that people at your local coffee shop know your name. Nobody at my coffee place knows mine. Perhaps I need to spend less time writing blog posts?
Cheers,
David
Indulge me, for a moment, as I agree with your post, but clarify with a metaphor:
The Internet is a party. A fucking awesome party. And not just because it is a bisexual mess. Of course adults are invited, but it’s not really their scene. Adults invented the Internet, but they also invented racial equality and that’s not really their thing, either. Facebook, Gchat, FaceTime, Skype, AIM–hell, this blog–they’re all a part of the same thing: The Internet Party.
The Internet Party is one of those awesome apartment parties where all of your friends keep showing up and like everyone is there and you’re chatting and drinking and the music is good (they just played a Stevie Wonder remix, in fact) but after a while you realize that maybe everyone but you is there with someone else and then little Away Messages start popping up over their heads with “30 Rock” quotes and links to alligators on YouTube and your mind starts to wander so you wander into the kitchen and the fridge is empty so you troll the counters for empties and after finding one you kind of linger for a second before nonchalantly nabbing the can and taking a nonchalant sip and wandering back into the party and you can’t tell if this is real or if you are just not in the mood.
That’s an Internet Party. We’re all sitting in our coffee shops, cubicles, and hotel rooms, wondering if this is real or if we’re just not in the mood. Because is it not strange that because of the Internet we’re sort of all at the same party ALL THE TIME? It’s exhausting. And we’ve developed filters and signals–red dots, away messages, on-and-off buttons–but it doesn’t change the fact that we can’t leave the party. To round out the metaphor, the empty beer is internet porn.
So party on, dudes. Things aren’t that bad. We still go to parties. We still go to coffee shops. We still have real sex.
What we don’t do, I fear, is remember to flush our shit.
Nicely done, David. I have not paid a lot of attention to Gladwell or to Putnam — gosh, I think I was raising kids instead — but I am tired, tired of hand-wringing and nostalgia.
Life moves on. Technology changes things. In the 1920s it was radios and cars and cars IN radios which meant that dating moved off the front porch. Much hand-wringing. 1960s, the pill. Etc. etc.
Why can’t FB be an “and?” Not a substitution for face to face, but an adjunct?
Like blogging.
Thanks for the comment, Carol. Really good to hear from you. Everyone should check out Carol’s blog: http://carolwallace.wordpress.com/
Hi David,
Really enjoyed the article. I think the Putnam connection is definitely on the mark. I do think though that your defense of Facebook — if that’s what it is — does succumb to what Zadie Smith called the “last defense of every Facebook addict”:
“but it helps me keep in contact with people who are far away! Well, e-mail and Skype do that too, and they have the added advantage of not forcing you to interface with the mind of Mark Zuckerberg — but, well, you know. We all know. If we really wanted to write to these faraway people, or see them, we would. What we actually want to do is the bare minimum, just like any nineteen-year-old college boy who’d rather be doing something else, or nothing. ”
Every once in a while I hear that they have published the correspondence of some historical personage or other and I find it actually impossible to imagine sustaining such intense long-form correspondences with anyone no matter how far away or beloved. People wrote letters to each other. By hand. It probably took for fucking ever. This was compounded by the irritating realities and inconveniences of transporting pieces of actual paper across real distances. Lovers wrote love letters. Scientists across continents kept up with one another’s researches. This means that people devoted massive chunks of time to maintaining relationships through actual long-form correspondence. Why is this completely unthinkable to me?
A real problem with Facebook is precisely that you have to interface with the rather mediocre mind of Mark Zuckerberg. Everything I have to say about this is said much better by Zadie Smith in an article that I might as well link already: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generation-why/ Facebook encourages us to think of persons as bland catalogues of “likes” which are basically collection of commodity fetishes and propensities to consume. Zadie Smith, again:
“It feels important to remind ourselves, at this point, that Facebook, our new beloved interface with reality, was designed by a Harvard sophomore with a Harvard sophomore’s preoccupations. What is your relationship status? (Choose one. There can be only one answer. People need to know.) Do you have a “life”? (Prove it. Post pictures.) Do you like the right sort of things? (Make a list. Things to like will include: movies, music, books and television, but not architecture, ideas, or plants.)”
I think if I try to keep going I will only quote incessantly from Smith’s article so I hope you just go read it. It is really, really good. It is the kind of article that makes me grateful there are writers because then somebody can think about these things properly and explain them to me. If I could make it required reading for everyone with a computer, I would.
I suspect that the current critiques of the impersonality of communication via Facebook were also made when the printed word first appeared in the 13th century.
I can hear people at the time saying, “The printed word is so impersonal compared with attending a lecture or engaging in a conversation, where you can see what the speaker looks like, hear his tone of voice, see how he relates to the audience, etc.” I also suspect that similar critiques were voice when the telegraph and the telephone were first introduce in the 19th century, and movies, radio, and television in the 20th.
Each of these new means of communication was seen at first as more impersonal than those which existed prior to its invention. Nevertheless, as we learned to exploit their possibilities, each has allowed us to participate in a much larger, more diverse and more dispersed community than was previously available to us.
So, although I am not currently an avid social network user I see no reason to doubt that in time a similar evolution will take in this domain as well..
I suppose none of these digital media tools helped much in organizing protests in Egypt, either. They dropped off the internet for no apparent reason at all.
Sarcasm aside, it takes quite a bit of duress for people to organize themselves to that degree. We simply do not experience that duress in our daily lives. Absent it, we have insufficient means to judge whether or not these tools have a positive or negative effect on society as a whole. They are simply that: tools. Ploughshares, swords, Facebook and Twitter.
My first introduction to the internet was IRC and Usenet news, in 1990. Yes, that means I’ve been on the internet for 21 years. Before the web came along and changed everything. And while the signal to noise ratio is still piss poor, it sometimes galls me to read prose that criticizes the tools as being somehow detrimental to our ability to communicate or to find deep connections. As a person who has had deep, intimate conversations with people all over the world that she’s never met in person, it’s just a little bit offensive. Some of these people have helped me learn and grow in my profession. Some of them just desperately needed someone to talk to, and I was able to be there for them. Some of them I have known for the entire 21 years. These are relationships that would never have come into my life without the thing you call a ‘cruel, inadequate substitute.’ It seems to me that you can use these adjectives only because you are not using the tools provided to the full measure of their capacity. Only a person who lacks insight would dismiss them so.
Years ago, I sat up all night chatting with someone in Bagdad. There was lag, because he was on a dial-up. But he was trapped in his dormitory building, hiding under his bed while bombs went off outside. How much danger he was actually in, I will never know. But it was obvious that he was terrified and needed all the normal, boring conversation he could get. Was he lying to me? I’ll never know that, either — but I couldn’t walk away from that story, even so. Every tool humans have can be used for malicious or deceptive purposes. Or it can be used in a compassionate way, to keep a terrified student company while the world is blowing up all around him. The way we work is too complex to be reduced to a few trendy adjectives.
If it’s worth anything, I know of a couple dozen intelligent people who have met, married and even had children — relationships that would not have been possible without the internet. Curiously, these are some highly intelligent people with highly intelligent children. I’m one of them. Every little progress has ripples.