Whither the Individual?

   So where is the individual is the question I'll try to answer for you in the next few paragraphs. But it's not a question of where like "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego," but instead a more "Where's Waldo" kind of question. We have a sneaking suspicion that the individual is out there, but there are no clues that would help us track them, we just need to use our naked, cunning eye to seek out the individual in the web of conformity. On our quest, we will look at three different social networking sites and the user-generated content on each to decide if there is in fact an individual out there, or if everyone is trying their best to mimic everyone else.
   First, let's look at Facebook. Oh, the infamous Facebook. While browsing the web, I stumbled across a blog "Digital Buzz Blog" and found some quite interesting facts. While reading through them, I started realizing how much of an addiction Facebook has become. The "veil" that is placed in front of users' faces when they are on the internet is expected, but the degree to which this veil actually gives them courage is astounding. According to the blog, "57% of people talk to people more online than in person." It's fun, yet somehow scary to see how much people rely on Facebook for that important social aspect of the human life. We're going to conduct an experiment throughout the length of this blog post. We're going to count how many times I check my Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. I'm not going to fight the urge. That would disrupt the experiment. So I will keep a count and at the end, I will disclose how many times for each social networking site. Clearly each time I check one of these, it is disrupting my learning and thought process. What is the big need to constantly be seeing what is happening in the lives of others? And what is the big need to incorporate their lives into yours. How much of "checking Facebook" is really "checking what is cool"? It would be quite an upset to find out that what you've been doing or thinking is uncool. Is this why we feel the constant need to see what other people are doing? To see how it compares to what we're doing?
   According to "Digital Buzz Blog", 48% of college age kids check Facebook right when they get out of bed. The even scarier statistic, 28% check it even before they get out of bed on their smart phones. I look at this statistic and think to myself, "wow, that's an addiction" however, I think about it and I checked my Facebook before getting out of bed this morning and pretty much every morning now that I think about it. And then as soon as I get out of bed, I turn on my computer and go on the internet. My set homepages on my Google Chrome browser are Facebook and Foxmail. So the first thing I'm greeted with is my Top News Feed and then how can I help but to read through some of that and see what everyone has been up to lately. Could it be that our social networking sites are leading us to the same destructive behavior as the kids in Korea that need to go to rehab for their excessive use of the internet? It makes me wonder if I could go a day without checking my Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr. All day I would probably be jittery and wondering what is going on around me and what I'm missing.
   So as we move away from Facebook, we can look at Twitter. Here you can follow basically anyone. Some you need to have them approve of you following them, but bigger Tweeters such as Oprah, Charlie Sheen, and Chelsea Lately have open Twitters and you can follow them no matter who you are. Does the connection with famous people make us feel more powerful? Does it make us feel more well liked? Is constantly reading Ellen DeGeneres' tweets going to make me more famous? I'm a huge fan and when I clicked "Follow" is it possible that in the back of my mind I'm following her because I want to be more like her? Like Facebook, Twitter is a social networking site, however, it is a lot less personal than Facebook. All Twitter is, is a collection of Facebook statuses one after another. There is really no communication. And if there is, it is limited to @mentions. There is no guarantee that the person you @mention will @mention you back (especially if they are famous). So why follow them? Because being famous is cool. If you read their tweets and they give you insight or knowledge that will give you a head start on the other uncool people, then why not put yourself in that opportunity?
   But where is the individual there? Nowhere. With the massive amount of postings clogging your Twitter Timeline, to be heard as an individual, there is no hope. Unless you are famous or you have a lot of your friends following you, no one really cares what you post on there. It is more a way of finding and listening to those more important to you to find a way to be more important like them. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right?
   So this brings us to our final contender, YouTube. This site is a bit different. It is based solely around user-based content. With a medium like this, there is little room for conformity. Yet we still do see a little. However limited it is, there is still some mock-umentaries that emulate most famous film styles. Yet the writing has to be all original unless the user wants to be charged with copyright infringement. Here viewers can clearly see the individual. However, there are countless users that focus their content on media that has already been produced. There are countless videos made that are taken right from TV shows or news stations. Many republish these videos as funny pranks or to inform their viewers, however, there is no true originality in that. It gives insight to the individual's interest, but there is no real extension of one's self when re-posting. For those who are using YouTube as a way to get out their productions, it is clear that they are using the site for its original purpose; to give users a space to publish and produce original works. Yet, for those who just use it as a way to post funny videos that everyone can see elsewhere, it can be said that they are losing themselves to the whole.
   When we look at the social media sites we are all a part of, it's interesting to note why we are there. Is it to share our experiences through a post, blog, or video? Or it to show the world how similar we are to a certain type of people? You must ask yourself the question, why are you Facebook friends with your mom, your dad, your best friend that you see every day? Could it be that you want other people to see that you are just as well-connected as they are? Or is it because you see them as someone to "virtually" look up to and therefore you find yourself creeping on them and trying to copy their way of thinking/posting? The reason we have Facebook and Twitter and YouTube accounts is because everyone else has them. The truth is that on these sites we are no longer an individual. We are just another post complaining about the weather, another teenager uploading a photo of a drunken night's party, or another producing hopeful wishing that someone will enjoy yet another video about cats. Online we wear a veil that gives us strength, but also makes us faceless.

Experiment Results:
Twitter: 15
    Tweets posted: 4
Facebook: 8
    Activity: 1 Comment
Tumblr: 8
    Posts: 1  


Sources Mentioned and Used:
This is your brain on Facebook
Digital Nation