Is it possible to talk about an aesthetic experience of Facebook? Facebook platform had the precedents of Myspace and Hi5 (in Latin America), who functioned as places to have a personal profile, share photos, music (specially MySpace) and be in touch with friends.
Every profile was and is an opportunity to show the best of ourselves. We can re-create ourselves. Is very improbable that somebody wants to upload ugly photos of share negative information. Those internet sites offer the possibility to expose ourselves to ‘the others’ in the way we want to. Is a kind of universe that pretends to rebuild us again
But the appearance of Facebook also brought new tools: the possibility of value the publications of our contacts and new feed of our friends. We can know everything they publish in real time. Those are tools that increase the possibility of subjectivation of the participantes. Is not necessary to find ‘other´s life’ information, the information comes to us.
The Facebook experience starts since we log in to the site. Before than a literary, politic or economic experience we feel that is a personal experience and a new source or information. For example, when I log in, the first thing I see if my friends are happy, is they started a relationship or if the like The Matrix or the music of Silvio Rodríguez.
As well as me, they want to show (or show-off) them through this platform. Facebook was no initially like that; they added the instant format from Twitter. Now, instead of talking by phone, is possible to know what happens in my social circuit in few seconds every times I log in and I don’t even have to find the information.
This necessity to show our lives and look for the others information could be sometimes a narcissist (and voyeurist) experience where the personal profile construction can be assumed as a way to improve of ourselves in the society. The extra exposition in the social networks can be also negative if we spend too much time there and also because some companies find their potential employees there before hiring them.
Veronica Palowski made a video caricaturizing the risks of being obsessed with Facebook.
The platform and their functions can distract us. Sometimes we use Facebook by defect.
“El hecho literario ha dejado de existir como fasinación; esa fascinación la producen ahora esos objetos no estrictamente literarios: computadoras, DVD, teléfonos móviles, pantallas, en las que la literatura, el texto, se ve relegado a mero vehículo o pretexto que nos conduce a esas nuevas “maravillas”; es más maravilloso el Iphone que el contenido que alberga ese iPhone” (Fernández Mallo, 75)
Is true that the virtual world has influence in the real one, but sometimes we may foget which one id the important one. Facebook allow us to send ‘gifts’ like roses to the girl we like, o to poke somebody; but all of those things are not real-real.
Every day is harder to differentiate the fine line between what it is real and virtual and if the form is more attractive form us than the essence of thethings. Facebook received more visits than Google in the US and has recently launched a application that pretends to merge Youtube, Twitter , Google and other webs in its system.
Thus, while we listen to a song in Pandora (internet radio) we can use the Facebook ‘Like’ button and see that one of our friends also like the same music.
Is this experience surrounding us too much? For Spivak this is how it works in our current capitalist system, “Globalization is the imposition of the same system of exchange everywhere…The globe is in our computer. No one lives there. It allow us to think that we can aim to control it” (72).
In another example, we can see how a new from the Centro Cultural de España in Lima is offered in my Facebook profile. There are already 6 people who valued the same new.
Since this moment, we are creating ‘collective information’ but at the same time reinforcing the pretension of the positive aesthetic of the site. Alejandro Piscitelli created a workshop called ‘Proyecto Facebook’ where he posted the process of the seminar an he show this positive pretension of the social network: We post our best pictures, we ‘Like’ others’ comments, but get cannot dislike then (there is no button to do that).
Facebook offer us the freedom to ‘express ourselves’ but at the same time we have to agree many conditions to be part of it. Privacy in social networks is now a controversial issue even in politic debates[i]. But we have to keep in mind, that as a ‘viral loop’ today, it could be an old thing tomorrow.
[i]US Senate claimed for privacy in social networks http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=92b96ffd-3547-46bc-abc5-8d61dc39175a
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