Hi everyone! My name is Brandon Chiazza and I am a junior transfer student to Cornell. My hometown is Rochester, N.Y. and my previous institution was Monroe Community College--also in Rochester. So far, I've enjoyed my short time here at Cornell. I am in CALS and am a Communications and AEM major. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do after graduation, though I'm sure that those majors will give me some options. I love to play music and am looking to start a band here so please get a hold of me if you're interested!
As far as an “online space,” I find facebook to be one of the most contemporary and interesting (although maybe not so original) of the web phenomena. Besides MySpace, facebook is one of the most diverse and extensive sites of its nature.
Why do people like facebook? I think it offers people a less interactive way to communicate despite it being an effective way to stay connected with people you normally wouldn’t stay connected with. Although you may only friend someone once and never speak to them again, I wonder how many parents in the previous generation can have the accessibility of the majority of their high school class with a quick post on a wall or a quick search for “friends”. Facebook along with other websites alike have altered the future of communication.
But aside from the obvious implications from facebook, there has been a sort of addiction to the site and although Wallace’s “online spaces” are somewhat outdated, I think she brings important perspectives to the Internet with her “taxonomy” of the particular corners of the web as well. The addiction comes with the psychological affects it has on us. How often do you check your wall to see if someone took their time to comment about you? How often do you check to see if anyone has befriended you or even count how many friends you have? It is changing the way we perceive ourselves. Are we being trained to be more self-centered?
I also find it interesting that as we have progressed, it has become increasingly more difficult to label websites and aspects of the web as she has. If one were to try to label something like a facebook, they would have to include it in a few different of the online spaces. Wallace writes on page 4, “although there is much overlap between and variation within environment types, they differ on certain fundamental characteristics that seem to affect the way we behave when we experience them.” These “fundamental characteristics” that Wallace describes still exist, however the inclusiveness of every website brings some of these fundamental characteristics together (we find a Google search bar through Cornell’s homepage or a YouTube video application through Facebook).
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3 comments:
First of all, welcome to Cornell! I really enjoyed your post, and I think that it focused on a different aspect of facebook than the one that many people focus on. You looked at facebook and how it affects us, and how it makes us feel knowing that people out there are looking at our profiles or taking time to post on our walls, rather than just focusing on the "stalking" aspect of facebook.
I feel that one would not be incorrect in saying that facebook has the potential of making our day brighter. Most people enjoy seeing that someone posted on their wall, or added photos of them, or requested their friendship. It makes one feel good. There's also little potential of being hurt by facebook, because it's easy to rationalize everything away, i.e. you've had no wall posts because everyone is too busy to be writing on walls right now. I think this is where some of the appeal, and addictive nature, of facebook comes from.
As a facebook addict myself I found your post very interesting and I'm now trying to look at my addiction in a different way. For some reason I find myself on it constantly, and I do get excited when I see that someone has written me a message, a wall post, or best of all poked me. Your post has sadly made me see a side of facebook where I want to know which of my friends are thinking about me and care enough about me to send me something on it. I don't like looking at it this way and I actually think it’s sad that I get these feelings from facebook but I can’t help that I do. On the other hand, I do take part in the stalking aspect as well and I don’t think this has anything to do with self-centeredness. For me it is more a way to pass the time when I’m bored and check in on the lives of my friends that I don’t get to see that often. I also know that it will always be there to entertain me and I don’t know if it is more of an addiction of maybe just habit.
What up Brandon? And welcome to the coldest place on earth!!!! Enjoy the sun while you still can. I really enjoyed your blog post. You chose to discuss facebook, which I’m not going lie and blow smoke up your butt, isn’t an original topic. Everybody is talking about it these days. However, the specific topics and questions you brought up were very insightful and original so you completely redeemed yourself; touché. It’s scary to think, but facebook really does bring out everybody’s vanity and self-centered side. Even for the least vain and self-centered people, facebook makes it very hard not to constantly check if any new people “friended” you, messaged you, or commented on your wall or a picture of you. I also agree with what you said about how, especially now, many of the different online spaces are merging together. Wallace should get her act together and write another book. Facebook is definitely a very interesting internet phenomenon, especially when dealing with the whole conceited aspect you discussed in your blog. Great post; keep up the good work, and stop checking your facebook profile so often.
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