The Social Network and Its Influence on Intimacy and Friendship - Essay Example

Name: xxxxxx Tutor: xxxxxx Title: The Social Network and Its Influence on Intimacy and Friendship Institution: xxxxxx Due Date: xxxxxx Introduction The Social Network, a film by David Fincher is behind the pillar of our social lives through Facebook. It dramatizes the incidents that occurred in creation of Facebook. This emotionally wrenching and brilliantly entertaining film is created around a depressed paradox. Mark Zuckerberg a 19 year old Harvard Sophomore, discovered Facebook and ultimately developed a five hundred million network of friends but he was too self centered, obsessed with work and withdrawn that he could not stay close to any person. After being dumped by his girlfriend Erica, Mark developed facemash.com a portal which he used to compare and rate university girls based upon their looks. Social network, friendship and intimacy Fincher’s The Social Network presents an intimate friendship as a close interpersonal relationship that enables one to have a positive experience about the friendship. However, Mark was a visionary, imaginative genius of the digital architecture who was motivated by jealously, and a sense of entitlement. Mark Zuckerberg infuriated that things were not moving as he want them to and he therefore restructured the globe the way he wanted. However, Mark was not sensitive to the harm he was inflicting on others, which made him to loose all the friends he had (Lanier, 2011). According to Lanier, (2011), social networking sites like Facebook can be used to create intimate relationships but if people fill it with trivialities, self absorption and thoughtless words, they will waste one another’s time. However if people utilize Facebook to cultivate extensive conversation, and treat other people generously, it leads to creation of long lasting intimate relationships (Lanier, 2011). Facebook grants people a lot of helpful devices for community development and creative expression when they put the needs of their friends into account. According to Lanier, (2011), The Social Network presents the empire building efforts of Zuckerberg as being fueled by greed and a desire for authority, and though he gets a lot of things done, he feels empty at the end because he ends up without any friend. In spite of his grand achievements along with their rewards; power, fame and money, Zuckerberg ends up dissatisfied and lonely. His conceit has cost him the only friends he has and through demanding love in his personal terms, he has made significant relationships impossible (Lanier, 2011). According to Fincher, (2010), The Social Network hints at an emotional shift generated by the information Age, a novel impersonality that influences almost every person. Just like Zuckerberg, Facebook is a paradox, a website that commemorates the aura of intimacy whilst offering the respite of distance, replacing the bodiless sharing and pleasures of self-generated celebrityhood for creation and encounters of friendship (Fincher, 2010). Social network, authenticity, behavior and distinction In The Social Network, authenticity means sincerity and one is authentic when he does not adopt signals that present him as something that he isn’t. With respect to the idea of intimacy, a person is authentic when he is really offering sincere intimacy. Naturally, this results to distinctions amid those who really tend to display genuine intimate behaviors and people who simply signal that they are very inclined to intimacy without using the correct signaling behaviors (Lanier, 2011). However, the existence of continual endeavor for authenticity generates a greater difficulty for those attempting to engage themselves in intimate relationships. Once personal routines are stolen and utilized as signals of intimacy, they later destroy the trust one established with the people closest to him or her. Fincher (2010) argues that whist intimacy is characterized by minimization of signaling behavior, attaining intimacy with another individual usually requires an individual to pass numerous signaling tests. In The Social Network, Zuckerberg and his female friend Erica are frequently failing to properly send signals to one another. Whilst Erica isn’t completely blameless for this, his boyfriend is displayed to be the most horrible offender. Zuckerberg increasingly becomes frustrated and uneasy and his realization that he is unsuccessful in both reading and passing the appropriate signal forces him to constantly question the intent of Erica, resulting to a breakdown of their intimate friendship (Fincher, 2010). Social network and creation of friendships Gregg (2007) notes that Social networking sites like Facebook are leading to online friendships and communities, a positive move and an essential recompense for a variety of economic and social changes occurring as a result of shift to an information economy. The degree to which individuals select to conduct important parts of their private lives online such as finding a friend or life partner represents opportunities obtainable from previous types of social activities and their reliability in offering satisfying relationships. In The Social Network, Zuckerberg discovered Facebook which enabled him to develop a five hundred million network of friends (Fincher, 2010). Gregg (2007) argues that social networking sites like Facebook allows an individual to join a certain group and also permits his or her profile to be freely circulated to a broader market of latent friends. Wall space, comment sections, inboxes, instant messaging, and status updates incite friendly discourse and permit gestures and mementos, which act as tangible proof of friends’ continuing presence and potential for additional hook ups in future (Gregg, 2007). Internet researchers have tended to agree that social networking sites are the domain of young persons, endorsed by a soundbite ambitious media cycle search for the latest trends or institutional restraints, directing scholars to opportunistically regard their learners as representative users. Gregg (2007) argues that in every case, the relationships the websites have with class, labor and work have been downplayed, regardless of the fact that they have originated from, and are hugely accessed within work and vocationally oriented sites. According to Gregg, (2007), aspiring artistes were the driving force behind the popularity of MySpace whilst in Facebook, college as and post tertiary job sites have been vital to the original memebership and consequent exercises in crafting identity. In reality, even if young people only used these sites, it is both valuable and sensible preparation for labor conditions presently flourishing in network society. In The Social Network, a 19 year old man created Facebook which enabled him to achieve great fame, rewards and money. Gregg (2007) presents social network as having negative impacts on families and friendships, and how the federal government is undertaking campaigns to sieve inappropriate network content and safeguard families online. This symbolizes a recognized genre of media representation which refutes social networking sites for their hazardous voyeuristic potential. The government and parents feels that online sites like Facebook seem to offer proof that young children have been insufficiently informed on the idea of privacy and risks they engage in by sharing private information (Gregg, 2007). In The Social Network, Zuckerberg gets online and tells the whole world that Erica is a bitch. According to Fincher, (2010), Zuckerberg also refutes the decadent party, not to seek mature adulthood, but somewhat to attain superiority in the globe he is able to direct and alter. However, Parker draws him into slight conceit by challenging him and asking him if he likes being a useless person. In a form of ironic insight into social nature of individuals, Zuckerberg’s own social pains make him recognize that other individuals are hungry for social identity created through networks of friends (Fincher, 2010). According to (Goffman, 1959), when people enter into a certain social group or friendship they universally seek to attain information about the new friends. Information about an individual assists to define the situation and enable others to know in advance what they will anticipate of him or her. By being informed, other people will be conscious how to act so as to call forth an aspired response from the individual (Goffman, 1959). Goffman (1959) argues that if other people are unaccustomed with the person, they will observe and gather clues which will then permit them to apply their past experience with individuals nearly identical to the one before them or more significantly, to apply untested stereotypes. They might also presume from the past experience that only persons of a certain kind are likely to be located in a particular social setting (Goffman, 1959). The Social Network revolves around the discovery of Facebook and the difficulties that inventors encountered because of their differences in feelings and ideas as they tried to fit into this social networking site. Every person wanted to be acknowledged and some could do anything to attain that type of attention which tended to result to bad outcomes and breakdown of relationships (Fincher, 2010). Social network, Privacy and Publicity According to Boyd, (2010), social networking sites like Facebook do not interfere with privacy. Individuals of all ages deeply care about privacy and care about it online as they do offline. In the real sense privacy is about controlling over the way information flows. It’s about being capable of understanding the social setting so as to behave in an appropriate way. In order to achieve this, individuals should trust their understanding of the context, entailing the persons in social setting and how the situation appears. When thinking on privacy within a digital context, there are numerous things that one must know (Boyd, 2010). Firstly, an individual must distinguish between personally identifiable information (PII) and personally embarrassing information (PEI). Because majority of people interact online with individuals they know, and they usually make PII accessible since they need to be found by friends. These individuals also need to keep PEI concealed, at least to people who may go their way to utilize it maliciously (Boyd, 2010). Secondly, when having a conversation on social network, it might be public through effort and private by default. According to Boyd, (2010), the conversation is private since no person bothers to share what is being said. However, the chat might be made accessible to the public if a thing worth spreading it is uttered. Although the chat occurs within a public setting, it is private through default, and private by effort. On the other hand, when ones engage online in similar public settings like someone’s Facebook wall, the chat is public through default, and private by effort (Boyd, 2010). In The Social Network, Zuckerberg does not make any information private and even posts some online information illustrating that his girlfriend Erica is a bitch. Because of his inability to conceal information that was likely to hurt other people, Zuckerberg was not is not able to maintain intimate relationships and ends up as a lonely person at the end of the movie (Fincher, 2010). According to Andrejevic (2002), rumors of demise of privacy in 21st as a result of social network have been highly exaggerated. The increasingly significant role of online surveillance in digital economy must not be structured as vanish of privacy itself, but as a change in control of private information from individuals to private firms. The consumption preferences and behavioral habits, is sympathetically not being publicized but is rather being amassed into proprietary products, whose economic worth is dependent upon the reality that they are privately owned (Andrejevic, 2002). Conclusion The Social Network presents friendship and intimacy as interpersonal relationships that offer individuals a positive experience from the friendship. In inmate relationships, people must consider the needs of others in order to make the relationships long lasting. Therefore, in order maintain intimacy friendships, people must be authentic and present themselves as good people on social networking sites like Facebook. Bibliography Boyd, D, 2010, Making sense of privacy and publicity. Retrieved on August 12, 2011, from Lanier, J, 2011, The social network, a film directed by David Fincher, with screen play by Aaron Sorkin, Retrieved on August 12, 2011 from Denby, D, 2010, David Fincher and The Social Network, Retrieved on August 12, 2011 from Gregg, M, 2007, Thanks for the ad(d): neoliberalism’s compulsory friendship, retrieved on August 12, 2011 from Andrejevic, M, 2002, The work of being watched: interactive media and the exploitation of self disclosure, Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 230–248 Goffman, E, 1959, Presentation on self in everyday life, Doubleday & company, New York. Fincher, D, 2010, The Social Network (2010). Retrieved on August 12, 2011 from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/ Read More