Facebook fashions and faux-pas

A non-Facebook user (are there any?!), an outsider might see the time spent on changing statuses, exchanging pictures and throwing virtual sheep at each other as time wasted, while another will probably (unknowingly) see this as examples of fashion, though in an online sense. They are signals of social position in an information based society (Donath, in press).

There are fashions in clothes, slang, management techniques. As is the nature of fashion, it is constantly changing the way of doing something. Fashions are signals whose form is frequently transforming, while the social meaning remains the same (Donath, 2007). Fashion is about knowing the changing social meaning of an object or the way of doing things.

Even in the world of blogs, where the fashion is in the conspicuous ‘free’ medium of information (ahh, citizen journalism), being at the forefront can be costly, much like a misjudged upcoming clothing trend.

According to Judith Donath’s article Signals in Social Supernets, a tremendous amount of fashion exists on many social networking sites. It could be in images, movies, jokes, or even styles of profile pictures. These fashions spread like wildfire. Facebook applications are no different. Many could perhaps be considered social grooming aids for our online lives. What better way to tell someone that you’re thinking of them by giving them a zombie bite? (No, I do NOT want to be a zombie, pirate OR ninja). The profile of the fashion-conscious user will be plastered with many, many icons showing how many applications they have. Displaying these personally selected applications on your profile shows one’s fashion knowledge and status; is it a ‘cool new app’ or a lame one that everyone removed from their profiles weeks ago that is an embarrassment to your name?

In the public space of social networking sites, these virtual fashions can create virtual walls, allowing others within their subculture to recognise if they are ‘one of us’. Within these subcultures, people have a common understanding of things like inside jokes and references to other media like shows that may have not yet reached mainstream culture. An example, on Facebook’s SuperWall, there was an image circulating that depicted a cat with a piece of cheese on its head, with the caption “CHEEZ: you doin it wrong”. Anyone who is not aware of lolcats (once again, are there any?!) would have been a little confused by this photo. But for the rest of us, it is a reference to the earlier lolcats image “I can haz cheezburger?”

In short,

References:

Donath, J. (2007). Signals in Socials Supernets, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Available from: http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00394.x (accessed May 1 2008).

Donath, J. (In press). Signals, Truth and Design. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.