the essence of FRIENDSTER.COM

souljah_boy · December 2003

is there anything philosophical about friendster.com? is there any connection whatsoever with past philosophies? please post them thanks!

freakster2k1 · December 2003

Quine's web theorY? hehe by the way add me. !

HBB · December 2003

Im three degrees removed from Bruce Lee.

Add me too! Pati sa myspace.com.

m_ke2 · December 2003

nabasa ko lang somewhere na a group is trying to prove that there is only 4 degrees of separation between 2 people around the world, yung friendster parang ganun, malalaman mo kung sino naka-connect kanino, just a thought...

aajao · December 2003

its a small world, eh?

vinta18 · December 2003

1. How do you define FRIEND? Just because I know you or work with you doesn't mean I'm friends with you. But friendster registers you as my "friend."

2. "Tell me who your friends are..." seems to be the friendster philosophy. It seems to imply that just because you and I know someone in common means that we can be friends.

3. Are "fakesters" (i.e. imaginary IDs) people, too? They have friends, right?

Ischaramoochie · December 2003

hehe, Friendster Thread under the guise of a philosophical issue

btw, add me

Lucca Yamazaki · December 2003

Aw crap, you folks just said what I was supposed to post.

Btw, add me too.

Ischaramoochie · December 2003

How Real are Internet Friendships?

Jeremy Stangroom

Many of the philosophers who have written on the internet have argued that internet relationships are in various ways diminished compared to everyday, embodied kinds. For example, Hubert Dreyfus in his On The Internet argues that our sense of the reality of things and people and our ability to interact effectively with them depend on the way our body works silently in the background. Its ability to get a grip on things provides our sense of the reality of what we are doing and what we are ready to doAll this our body does so effortlessly, pervasively, and successfully that it is hardly noticed. That is why it is so easy to think that in cyberspace we could get along without it, and why it would, in fact, be impossible to do so.

It is easy to understand why philosophers make these kinds of arguments. Many important facets of our personal relationships seem to require face to face contact. Dreyfus, for example, argues that trust in another person is in part based on the experience that they do not take advantage of our vulnerability when given the opportunity to so in a face to face situation. Even if one does not accept this, it does seem to be true that we can have a certain kind of confidence in people we meet in person which is not available in online relationships. Particularly, the opportunity for gross deception is minimised in a face to face situation. Gordon Graham, and countless others, have pointed out that it is very easy to deceive people on the internet by inventing wholly imaginary personas - something which it is much more difficult to achieve in the non-virtual world.

It is for these, and similar, kinds of reasons, then, that there is the belief that internet relationships are the poor relations of real, embodied relationships. However, one must be a bit careful before jumping too readily to this conclusion. One reason is that non-virtual relationships are subject to kinds of distortion which are largely absent from internet relationships. In a previous Word of Mouse, I noted the importance of physical attractiveness as a factor influencing the judgements we make about people. The significant point is that we make unwarranted inferences about people on the basis of our perception of their attractiveness. For example, as a consequence of what psychologists call a positive halo effect, attractive people are considered more intelligent, more moral, better adjusted, nicer, more sexually responsive and more competent than their less attractive fellows. And, of course, it isnt only attractiveness that influences the judgements we make about people. We also take our cues from, amongst other things, age, sex, racial characteristics, style of dress, accent and social class.

The reason that these kinds of cues will often result in distorted judgements about people is because we make use of implicit personality theories which rely on stereotyping. In other words, we tend to take our cue from these readily identifiable characteristics to place people into categories, and then we assume that they share the other attributes which we think are typical of the category. The philosopher Miranda Fricker has pointed to an interesting fictional example of this kind of process. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, set in Alabama in the 1930s, there is a trial of a black man. The all-white jury genuinely do not believe his testimony, even though it is clear he is telling the truth. The important point being that in that culture, at that time, being black was a marker indicating quite falsely - a lack of credibility. Not surprisingly, it is easy to find real-life examples of stereotyping. For instance, Rodney Karr found that gay males were rated more shallow, yielding, tense and passive than males labelled as heterosexual.

The significant point about internet relationships is that the characteristics we rely on to make judgements about people in the non-virtual world are largely invisible in the virtual world. The irony here is that it is precisely that facet of internet communication that makes gross deception possible the absence of a face to face relationship - which undermines our tendency to stereotype. It would be possible to overstate the significance of this fact. Even in relationships conducted entirely via the medium of the written word, we still make judgements about people which go beyond the evidence. However, it is likely that we do so largely on the basis of the actual content of our communication with a person, which, arguably at least, is more likely to be indicative of those aspects of a persons character which they themselves consider to be salient.

The corollary of this point is that in our internet relationships we have greater control over which aspects of our character we present to other people than we do in our everyday relationships. Of course, this is why people worry about deception on the internet. And it is a real concern - the individual who adopts a false persona in order to procure a sexual encounter with a vulnerable person behaves badly. But it is only part of the story. If by controlling which aspects our characters we present to people online we are able to avoid the more pernicious effects of our tendency to make judgements on the basis of unwarranted stereotypes, then it is possible we will develop online relationships which are, at least in some ways, less distorted and more real than most of our everyday, embodied relationships.

souljah_boy · December 2003

moochie et al. you guys ARE ONE BIG HELP!

souljah_boy · December 2003

post pa kayo on your thoughts on it, whether fact-based or opinion-based...i'll be glad to hear them

freakster2k1 · December 2003

dont forget. add me. hehe

souljah_boy · December 2003

well how am i supposed to add those who want to be added in my list if you're not giving any info? :ewan:

freakster2k1 · December 2003

haha. oo nga, pero, para humaba ang thread. we ought to pretend to be philosophizing. hehe

anawim · December 2003

essence of friendster?
hindi ba friendster-ness???
<<calling the thomists, sana tama ako>>

going to the non-thomist side (now that is, if i am correct), friendster also insinuates intersubjectivity, and the Heideggeraian concept of care (sorge).

Hyperion · December 2003

friendster: interlinked bulletin board + personal ads + private messaging system

the essense of all above: communication + self expression

Add me: [email protected]

Ischaramoochie · December 2003

anawim: friendsterity

Chase_Meridian · December 2003

Friendstership.

Essence? When you get to the bottom of this whole Friendster phenomenon, it's really no different from the usual texting and cyberchatting -- it's just all about connecting people, connecting with old friends, looking for prospective dates/partners through your friends or friends of your friends, etc. It also serves as some sort of directory. And of course, another venue not just for self-expression, but more likely, SELF-ADVERTISMENT courtesy of testimonials. It makes all these things a tad easier.