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burendasan4Third concern: the homogenization of individual expression on the Internet.
I remember when the rush to sign on to Facebook was beginning to gain momentum. People would often talk about how much they preferred the clean interface of Facebook to the tacky gaudiness of MySpace profile pages (remember glitter text macros?). Now I wish we could go back to those days when web pages and online profiles weren't perfect (and sometimes downright awful) but they were more individual and unique. When I think about it, as the years of the Web have progressed, the online spaces for self-expression and presence-creation have become more aesthetically homogenized and sterile while the services that provide these spaces have become more controlling and invasive of personal data. This article does a much better job than I could explaining what we lost when we opted for the clean, easy-to-use interface of Facebook.
Looking at this Tumblr blog of archived Geocities website screenshots, I'm struck at how much personality these pages had and how people were truly able to express what mattered to them most. Now on Facebook and Twitter, people are reduced to photos, comments, "likes," and articles they found interesting, all on a cold, blank interface. Yes, people still find ways to express themselves on the "Big 3", but it must be done in a fairly strict fill-in-the blanks template.
In this excellent New York Times article on the downfalls of modern convenience, Tim Wu says:
The paradoxical truth I'm driving at is that today's technologies of individualization are technologies of mass individualization. Customization can be surprisingly homogenizing. Everyone, or nearly everyone, is on Facebook: It is the most convenient way to keep track of your friends and family, who in theory should represent what is unique about you and your life. Yet Facebook seems to make us all the same. Its format and conventions strip us of all but the most superficial expressions of individuality, such as which particular photo of a beach or mountain range we select as our background image.
This leads me to my fourth concern: convenience has resulted in the widespread adoption of the "Big 3" social media platforms and vice versa
So in the space of a few years, a large majority of people joined Facebook, and to a lesser extent, Twitter and Instagram. It's scary how nearly 1/3 of the world's population is on Facebook. But what's really scary, and a tragedy really, is that this has resulted in the decline or even death of many niche online services that catered to a diverse number of communities. Any new social network who tries to set itself apart faces an uphill battle to get enough people to sign up for their service. Why? For one, people have social network "fatigue" and don't really want to try another social media platform. On the one hand, it's understandable because people's time is limited (see Part I) but on the other hand, it's frustrating, especially nowadays, because even though people complain about their experience on Facebook, they don't try to seek out a new platform could potentially result in a better experience. Part of the reason is that all their connections are on Facebook (or Instagram) so no one wants to leave that behind. Whenever I've joined new social networking platforms, I've been "forced" (this has actually been a good thing) to friend people I don't know IRL, because none of my real life friends can be bothered to try it out (perhaps in another post I might want to explore how online social connections have changed over the years?). And of course, there's the "network effect" paradox: people don't want to join a social network if it's not popular but it can't become popular unless people join.
But I think that one of the big reasons is that these platforms have also been designed to be easy and convenient to use (see Part II) so of course, it's easier to just go on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and post a picture or a link to an article, "like" someone's post, or type up a quick pithy status message (it's too much for some to do even that!-->guilty as charged) than to write a meaningful blog post or work on updating a personal web page. Keeping in touch with friends becomes a passive activity, consisting of glancing at whatever picture/article/status they posted. So because using the Big 3 social media platforms is so easy to the point of being mindless and because the majority of our social connections exist in these plaforms, we have little incentive to try another platform, even if it could potentially offer a better experience.
Speaking of social connections, there's nothing wrong with not wanting to lose touch with people online. Continued in Part IV
