Well I Guess This is Growing Up

One group that I am involved with that is entirely mediated online is MySpace. While this is one of the most common online communities out there today, I feel it is the only group online that I am a participant of which actually creates social ties in some way within the group.

Boyd (2006) writes an excellent section on to add a friend or not to add a friend in the MySpace community, discussing the social and relational ramifications of changing one’s Top 8 and such. The author cites MySpace as most likely the next step in life after inviting friends to your birthday party, then calling friends to hang out, and now rearranging your Top 8. I agree with this to some extent. I do feel, however, that age plays a major role in determining the consequences of something like a Top 8. In Boyd’s discussion, the argument is presented in a manner in which MySpace is for older kids, post-birthdays parties and post-calling friends to come over and hang out. There is nothing wrong with this initially, other than that no ceiling is placed on the age in which this sort of tacky drama tends to die down.

For instance, people of all ages, not just teenagers, are now using MySpace. Furthermore, some people are using the site for its actual original intention (MySpace had an original intention?!), to connect to others easily who otherwise may had been difficult to stay in touch with. Having said this, I have already reached the age (20) in which the Top 8 is no longer really “psychological warfare,” or at least not for anyone that I personally know. That is to say, my Top 8 currently represents the people I talk to on the most regular basis, or my closest friends, and everyone else is simply just a friend. This seems to be the pattern for most people my age, and in no way would I personally take offence to not being included on someone else’s Top 8. In fact, contrary to what Boyd’s article suggests, and again, I believe this sort of reciprocity is more common of younger users, two of the people in my Top 8 currently do not have me listed in theirs. “Some analysts have suggested that the greater the social and physical distance between the support seeker and provider (i.e., the weaker the tie), the less likely that reciprocity will take place” (Wellman and Gulia, 1996). I do not disagree with this at all. However, age is not mentioned or even taken into consideration in such a statement. While most of my friends and acquaintances live close by, this rule of reciprocity is simply not that important in effecting how those people and I socialize outside of the online community. Rarely would this ever come up in my social dialogue, unless it was in a humorous manner.

This brings me to my second point: MySpace has actually created conversational topics with my weak ties who, otherwise, I would not have much to discuss with when bumping into them. In other words, sometimes because I have a person listed as a friend on MySpace, that person and I are likely to view the same things on the site (blog updates, picture updates, other people’s pages in general, etc.). Therefore, upon seeing an acquaintance in which the conversation might sometimes be a little forced, there have been situations in which I have referred to MySpace, and they know exactly what I’m talking about. This breaks the tension, keeps the conversation flowing, and creates arguably an even stronger bond upon going separate ways than when we first ran into each other.

Was this MySpace’s original intention? Yes, in my opinion. The drama and the psychological warfare that teenagers go through on the site, it could be argued, is natural and no different than anything 50 years ago, and would have reared its ugly head in a different forum had MySpace not come along. As blink-182 eloquently put it, “well I guess this is growing up.”


References:

Wellman, B. and Gulia, M. (1996, April). Net Surfers Don’t Ride Alone: Virtual Communities as Communities. Communities in Cyberspace. Retrieved March 20, 2007, from http://www.acm.org/~ccp/references/wellman/wellman.html

Boyd, D. (2006, December). Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites. First Monday, v. 11(12). Retrieved March 20, 2007, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/index.html