The
day when I signed in Facebook for the first time, some six years ago, I had not
thought the way I think today about Zukerbergian artifact. My layman
understanding about this creation — a cyberspace, a digital platform for posting
status and photos— that it functions as a means of communication and evokes
peculiar kind of impression among its users either appreciating or condemning, did
not long last when my understanding changed and made me think the other way.
These days, every time I sign in, the
question “what’s on your mind?” at the top of the wall teases me a lot. Confusion
lurks. The single query instigates multiple other questions: Should I instantly write down and post whatever
comes into my mind? Is it addressing me or someone else who happens to read it?
Why is it so commanding? Why does it want to peep into my private life by entering
into my mind? The directness of such expression sometimes infuriates me—the
addresser positioning itself in a comfortable zone, perhaps in a position of an
authority that possesses the authenticity of questioning. Why it is so demanding and commanding. Due to
the absence of the request marker like ‘please’, the addressees are put into a
condition that they can be interrogated and asked, a position below the site
owner who stands up and looks down with a stern look having an excessive power.
Media technologies, Facebook not being an
exception, have been the sites of power exercise upon the powerless. It, to use
French political philosopher Louis Althusser’s term, 'interpellates' or ‘hails’
the identities of its users who are in subordinate position. The use of the
imperatives scattered throughout the wall like “search for people, places and
things,” “update status,” “add photos/videos,” “create photo album,” “post,” “see
more stories,” is suggestive of it.
The digital rhetoric of Facebook has been
establishing a narrative, which underpins a discourse of power positioning that
functions in terms of its regulators and users. This digital opera, even in the
modern world, has been bolstering the power discrimination through the means of
language.
One the other hand, the same Facebook treats
everyone as friend reminding the terminology “comrade,” the word communists
often use. My seniors as well as juniors have accepted and added me as friend and
I have added everyone as my friend. Everyone who has joined Facebook are 'friends'
irrespective of their professions, ranks, races, genders, classes, or languages;
be s/he an American peasant, African artist, Asian scholar, European
businessman or Australian student or anyone living in a corner of the word. At this juncture, Facebook seems to be treating
everybody in the same level of hierarchy by redrawing the existing boundaries
of higher or lower in different names and pretensions. This tendency tunes with
Russian critic Mikhail M. Bakhtin’s notion of “carnival” in which all rules,
inhibitions, restrictions and regulations that determine the course of everyday
life are suspended, and especially all form of hierarchy in society.
As per the report of the first quarter of
2015, it has 1.44 billion active users. They all have the same status as
friends whoever he or she is. On this ground Facebook is a utopian platform,
having no hierarchy at all.
Yet another feature of Facebook—its
democratic nature—is equally amazing. Its polyglossic nature welcomes multiple
voices, the voices even from margin. It is as open as tundikhel. Multiple users, irrespective of their position, interact
freely on their subjects of interest or anything that appears on the wall.
Use of imperatives everywhere and treating
everyone as friend are really contradictory. What does the site owner want to
do? What is his politics behind it? Does he want to maintain balance between
these two opposites in the line of German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche, who
argues the combination of opposites gives birth to a verbal artifact? If not, what is this double standard for? Or the
ever growing fame of Facebook these days is due to its ability to bring the
opposites together? Or, is this Facebook-friendship conundrum a newer,
deconstructive revival of Derrida's classic question "My friends, there is
no friend" as postulated in The
Politics of Friendship.
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