Facebook & The Cult Of Celebrity

David Fincher's latest film, The Social Network, examines the inception and development of the millenniums most influential website, facebook. It seems that 'website' is, in fact, too small a word for this ether based leviathan that plays such a large and perpetual part in the majority of peoples' lives. There are five hundred million members online worldwide, and this mind boggling figure increases daily. Every one of my friends - a cross section of hormonally unstable teenagers to world weary sophisticates - subscribes to the site, logging in on a regular basis for their fix of... And here in lies the question. What is it about facebook that draws so many people to their computers everyday? Not since Coca-Cola has a product managed to cross international boundaries and burry itself smugly inside the hearts and minds of the masses. I am reasonably sure that the majority of readers of this article will have a facebook account, so it seems unnecessary for me to dwell on the ins and outs of 'poking', of having something 'on your wall' or receiving a 'friends request.' Conversely, I have no interest in your 'relationship status', or the air brushed picture you have chosen for your profile. I will not dwell on the inappropriately tagged act of 'fraping' - when a person hacks into another person's profile and sends rude messages to other users: facebook rape. And I do not want you to place anything on my wall because I do not have a wall on which you might place anything. The proposed point of facebook is to act as a forum within which friends are able to stay in touch with one another while simultaneously saving the price of a stamp and without having to engage the otherwise taxing faculties required to write and post a letter. As a consequence there are hundreds upon hundreds of redundant post boxes up and down the country: slack jawed relics of a time long since forgotten by the youth and young at heart. This in itself is sad, but I do not believe that facebook is responsible for making extinct the art of letter writing. The internet did that many years ago. I can find it within myself to be okay with a medium that facilitates the laziness of a modern, dispirit society. That I can handle. But there seems to be a disproportionate amount of people on facebook who, after parting company or drifting apart for legitimate reasons such as shared animosity or outright hatred, find themselves reunited in the ether in a bid to increase their mutual perceived popularity. Some members on the site have hundreds - yes hundreds - of registered 'friends'. Is that even possible? It feels to me as if facebook wields the kind of ideological power capable of redefining the very word friend: friend (frend) n. [OE. Freond] 1. a person whom one knows well and is fond of. Friend' lily adv. What facebook has done is mutate this simple noun into something more akin to: friend (www.) n. that bloody idiot who used to bully me at school. So why do people acquiesce to such requests; why do they care about how popular they appear or are perceived to be; how good-looking, sexy, mysterious or alluring? Why all the effort? The majority of users, and here I feel the need to ask you to forgive the term, are ordinary folks: nine to fivers, mothers, fathers, students, even computer literate pensioners. So why is there only ever photos of parties, of hip happenings and club nights, birthdays you missed or album launches you must (surely you must) wish you could have attended? Pick any name at random and you might be forgiven for thinking that you have accidently stumbled upon the profile of a minor celebrity. And here, I think, is the key to Mark Zuckerbergs success. An unpopular computer geek in college, Zuckerberg must have understood all too well the power of popularity, the perception of success and the doors such perceived success might open. Fincher certainly suggests as much during the film's opening scene as Zuckerberg (played by Jesse Eisenberg) explains to his exasperated girlfriend the importance of a 'certain social standing'. Perhaps this was an unconscious understanding on Zuckerberg's part, perhaps not. Fincher treats his subject with dignity, and a certain ambiguity that refuses to judge in simple binary terms. The film closes on Zuckerberg checking and rechecking his own facebook page in the hopes that the same now ex-girlfriend might reply to his own 'friends request'. This is Fincher's only attempt to explore the effect/affect, and meaning of facebook, and the role it plays in our lives. Seeming popular does not necessarily mean that you are popular; but facebook is a medium that enables its users to manufacture a positive perception of their lives. We can all be our own Simon Cowell. Lucky us! Such perception (created through true or false advertising) can deliver to the user that desperately needed dose of celebrity; a glimpse of what it must be like - one's life experienced though the eyes of strangers as if through the lens of a studio camera. But is the user really being watched, admired, or are they merely watching a reflection of themselves? Isn't that what reality television is all about? Doesn't the medium of facebook merely play upon a kind of modern day existential crisis concerning our sense of self (of self-worth) and that self within a society that seems to demand success? The rise and rise of reality programming (and the subsequent death of good drama produced by British production companies) has constructed celebrities out of ordinary folks. X Factor, Big Brother, The Lion's Den, even Grand Designs, has placed upon our screens the very same faces that fill our supermarkets and offices. So why not me? That is the question I feel vibrating through the bones and egos of the majority of facebook devotees. Why can't I be famous for doing nothing in particular? Why can't people envy me, want to be me, want to 'poke' me? And in 2003 Zuckerberg answered that question for us all: No reason at all why it shouldn't be you, friend! Facebook is the platform upon which everybody can take their fifteen minutes and stretch it out into an eternity.com. Such self proclaimed, self constructed celebrity is about as legitimate as the daytime television spotlight enjoyed by ex Big Brother contestants, and as hard-earned. 'Here I am,' screams the profile. 'I am beautiful and successful and popular. I have one hundred and fifty friends and here are the photos of the party I literally just walked in from. I am coming to you live from my own existence and it looks great doesn't it!' I admit that all of this might come across as somewhat vitriolic, that I am teetering on the precarious edge of fully blown rant; but you spend an hour or two surfing the site and there seems to be little difference between facebook and Heat Magazine. Certainly the two mediums share the same casual attitude towards what my granddad might have referred to as 'fact.' Perhaps I am old fashioned, a curmudgeon before my time. Perhaps I feel sorry for all of the dejected post boxes, or am sentimental about a past in which you got in touch with somebody because you wanted to; because you cared. After all, you don't write a letter, buy an envelope and stamp, and walk the whole lot down to your nearest post box for a chap that used to pull your pants over your head in primary school, do you? And what about the Orwellian undertones blithely ignored by the five hundred million wannabe somebodies of facebook land? Zuckerberg's company knows your name, your habits, where you go, what you spend your money on: who you know and who knows you. Isn't that even a little bit scary? Or, just like the Z-list celebrities we see smiling inanely from our television screens, is privacy just another sacrifice on the road to moderate fame, mediocre infamy? Fincher has produced a compelling film with The Social Network, but I have little doubt that the majority of the audience will enter the seductive darkness of the auditorium, not because the reviews have been favourable, or even because Justin Timberlake, Jesse Eisenberg (playing the big man himself) and Ben Mezrich all turn in excellent performances; but because the simple act of going to see a film about facebook only serves to increase the sense that all of its users are part of something big, something that places them outside of the ordinary and that one step closer to the pages of a glossy magazine.