Watching Watchers Watching

Earlier this week I was discussing social media with two most excellent and learned gentlemen Josh Gee and Jordan Newman, and we were discussing the facebook virus that showed you a random sampling of people and claimed that they were "stalking your facebook." This led to the always fascinating debate of, since facebook is gathering data on your usage, they clearly which profiles you are viewing, and would have the ability to showcase that data, would they turn it on.

All three of us gave an emphatic no, going on to explain that if they did utilize this feature we would almost certainly end our facebook usage.

This brings up an interesting conundrum in social media: do we interact online because we wish to see, and also be seen, but never be seen seeing. Film critic Laura Mulvey has an interesting take on this debate in her famous essay: Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema. The essay posits the idea that people enjoy the cinema because we enjoy the feeling of watching without our subjects being aware of it. Our collective voyeurism allows us a sense of power over the subjects in a film, we are able to observe and analyze without the subjects being aware of our watching.

At first glance, this idea doesn't seem to translate into social media. By definition, the ease of content creation and the ability to share content suggests that people utilize social media specifically TO be seen. However, I think provides some interesting insight into the way in which we utilize social networks. Networks, especially ones with extensive profiles such as Facebook and LinkedIn are associative by nature. You look at one thing then see some other profile headline and click on it, which leads you to another, and so on and so on. Almost everyone agrees that this is the way such networks are utilized, but I think the fear we all have of having such activities made public suggests a certain interesting ambivalence: we accept such behavior as part of social networking, but we also view it as somehow socially unacceptable. One could argue that this has some interesting implications for the way we view social networking and digital interaction: we are coming to accept it as part of our modern social interactions, but there is still something about it that we find uncomfortable. We enjoy the ability to watch without being seen, but still feel that there is something voyeuristic about the watching.