Danah Boyd gave a thoroughly thought-provoking presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum this week about how the politics of class play out online -- and thoroughly debunked the idea that the Internet is a Utopian paradise in which we are "all equal."
To get specific, Boyd looks at the divide between Facebook and MySpace users. She quotes Kat, a 14-year-old from Massachusetts:
"I'm not really into racism, but I think that MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever, and Facebook is all... not all the people that have Facebook are mature, but its supposed to be like oh we're more mature."
That's right, a "ghetto." Boyd goes on to note that teenagers from wealthier backgrounds are more comfortable engaging in "adult" environments than teenagers from poorer backgrounds -- hence wealthier teens are probably more likely to favor the "mature" social networking site, Facebook. And here's the part where I am just going to quote from Boyd's analysis extensively, because she is so freakin' smart:
The fact [is] that MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population. Only a month ago, I was doing fieldwork in Atlanta where I found heavy usage of MySpace among certain groups of youth. They knew of Facebook but had no interest in leaving MySpace to join Facebook.Just go read the rest of her speech. She is one smart cookie.Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.
This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat's point: MySpace has become the "ghetto" of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.
The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there. And if we think back to the language used by teens who use Facebook when talking about MySpace, we should be truly alarmed. Those who are from privileged backgrounds tend to be far more condescending towards those who are not than vice versa. Many of us in this room come from privileged worlds where we want to "help" those who are not well-off. Here is where a privilege-check is necessary. How often do our language and mannerisms reflect a problematic level of condescension? Perhaps we should look at our teens. They are certainly speaking in a manner that reveals distrust and condescension.
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My guess would be that some of this divide stems from the fact that Facebook was originally exclusively for college students - who, even if not from wealthy backgrounds, are generally educated (or in the process of becoming educated) and have aspirations of being either solidly middle or upper class. Facebook was originally geared around college and alumni networks. MySpace has always thrown the gates open to all comers. Although anyone can register on Facebook now, people who have experience with a college campus are probably more likely to know about it and know others who are on it. Personally, I left MySpace because I felt that it wasn't patrolled very well and people who I didn't know kept sending me pictures of penises. Facebook seems a bit less Wild West, a bit more structured and doesn't assault me with loud music everytime I open someone's page.
This doesn't really mention Myspace's spam problem, which Facebook used to not have. I think that contributed to a lot of people moving.
Also, Facebook is just so much more aesthetically pleasing.
This makes it sound like Facebook is some exclusive country club. It's not. Anyone can have a Facebook account, and I'm not sure I see a class issue when both services are completely free. It used to be for students, which I always perceived to be an internet safety issue.
I agree with the thing about the annoying music on Myspace. I'll add to that obnoxious, seizure-inducing lay-outs.
It used to be for students, which I always perceived to be an internet safety issue.
This type of mentality is a problem. And I'm not going to lie. I thought the same thing when Facebook was thinking about openning up their site to everyone. They first thought about openning it to high school students, which I didn't mind. But I was afraid that I would get spammed and sexual messages if Facebook allowed just anyone to join, like I did on MySpace. I associated education with acceptable behavior.
I don't think it's a perceived relationship between education-level and acceptable behavior, but instead something that's more dependent on age. The stereotypical internet-predator is not a college student.
Of course, now we have seen how Facebook is a tool for stalkers of any age, but when Facebook first started, it was pretty scary to post your whole name on the internet. We were always told to never put personal information on the internet. The students-only nature of Facebook made it seem safe to do so.
This makes it sound like Facebook is some exclusive country club. It's not. Anyone can have a Facebook account, and I'm not sure I see a class issue when both services are completely free. It used to be for students, which I always perceived to be an internet safety issue.
First off, Facebook's roots are in exclusivity - up until a couple of years ago, you couldn't get in facebook w/o a college address. I remember the day my school got Facebook vividly.
Also, it's not just about the membership - it's about the context and community in which they take place, and how they are framed in the media.
...I suppose were Facebook to have the chid predator problem sadly associated with MySpace it, too, would have the same media perception.
This has not gone unnoticed by Stuff White People Like (aka Stuff Privileged White Hipsters Like):
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/07/31/106-facebook/
Wrong place! Will repost down below.
It's also worth noting that Facebook was not originally restricted just to people with college e-mail addresses, but to certain colleges, which had to be added to the system manually. My alma mater got Facebook the year before I arrived and throughout school, people would recall that first day that it was opened up to my college. You would walk down the hallway in the res halls and everyone was sitting on their computer, on Facebook.
There's two sides of this, then. One is that many people knew people from other schools who were already on Facebook (or The Facebook, as I only recently trained myself to stop calling it), so people were excited to reconnect with people from high school. There's also a privileging of some schools over others-- can you can bet that the Ivy League had it before your local community college had it.
"Also, Facebook is just so much more aesthetically pleasing. ... I agree with the thing about the annoying music on Myspace. I'll add to that obnoxious, seizure-inducing lay-outs."
In an related essay of Boyd's that I read a couple years ago, she makes a convincing argument that the aesthetics of social networking sites also play into the class division (i.e. white, "educated" folks preferring Facebook's relatively minimalistic look, whereas low-income teenagers of color, for instance, preferred Myspace's bright, busy lay-outs). I think it's a really sharp, relevant point that our class and education backgrounds can help shape/determine what we perceive as appealing design, and therefore influence which social networking sites we use.
Exactly what I was just about to say.
I don't have the research you cited to review, but I'm sorry, are we saying that POC like "obnoxious layouts & colors" while white ppl don't?
And what about before MySpace started plateauing, did white people like obnoxious layouts & colors and then change their minds? MySpace was a largely bourgeois space, 'mass market-ized', and then plateaued.
I know you aren't being snarky, but there's a 'trendy' effect on the Net just like w/ clubs & bars. There are some small, friendly, neighborhood bars that are always popular (think Feministing or your fave blog) & then there are huge mass market hangouts, like FB & MySpace. Remember Friendster? Remember Ofoto? Remember Plaxo & LinkedIn? I guarantee you within 3 yrs we'll be talking about Facebook the way we talk about MySpace now...if only b/cs kids are not going to hang out on the same website as their parents :-)
Maybe we're considering that not everyone finds what you find to be obnoxious, to be obnoxious.
That's a subjective judgment, and while I don't think anyone here is pretending to have research on the matter, it's not a crazy conclusion to think there may be less of an aversion to Myspace's format among the demographics that tend to use it...
Absolutely fascinating. Who knew switching social networking sites could come to mean crossing the proverbial train tracks?
I have been thinking quite a bit lately about present-day racism/classism: I spent a week last month in a city in the deep South for a national debate tournament. The school we competed in was an a absolute dream high school: award-winning, with the best technology and extracurricular offerings, doubtlessly sending students to the Ivies, with more private donations (listed on a plaque) than they probably know what to do with. It was in an affluent suburb and, despite the city's high proportion of African-Americans, overwhelmingly white.
Later, we went to a civil rights museum, which featured a representation/comparison of a white school's classroom during segregation and a black school's ... now, obviously, integration was made law, so, officially and technically-speaking, there are no barriers, but one of our coaches remarked "I wonder if it's really changed. Have we really come far?"
We looked at each other and shook our heads.
I think that it is in these 'free' zones (public education, the Internet), where everyone is supposed to be at essentially the same level with the same basic options as a user or student, where race and class are not supposed to matter at all, that they end up making the most obvious and disturbing difference, lending themselves to dark and heavy realizations.
On another note, I feel convicted of having the condescending manner that Dannah writes about: I am an advocate for universal equality, and, yet, in that, I sometimes find myself treating minority issues in a very pretentious and patronizing way.
"I think that it is in these 'free' zones (public education, the Internet), where everyone is supposed to be at essentially the same level with the same basic options as a user or student, where race and class are not supposed to matter at all, that they end up making the most obvious and disturbing difference, lending themselves to dark and heavy realizations."
What are those dark and heavy realizations?
In the free zones, where there is no institutional discrimination and people from any class or ethnicity can interact and have the same basic options, yet there still exist the most obvious differences.
That we haven't come that far, as I indicated.
Who is we?
You seem pretty aware and concerned about others. You seem to care. I figure you learned it from your community and family.
"The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. "
What values are those?
Maybe this is one of those culture issues, where it is not color, but beliefs.
Color, culture, and beliefs don't exist independently of each other.
True but what about those terrifying values?
Many Asians are Buddhist but they don't seem to have values that terrify white society.
I just think the author is overdoing it, most people here have given reasonable and objective examples of Myspace delivering annoyingly poor service.
There's nothing wrong with people's reasons for LEAVING. I think the question is just why it seems people of color and lower class people are more likely to stay on at Myspace, in spite of what appears to posters here to be a huge difference in function and appearance of the sites.
I am extremely
terrified of buddhists, so
peaceful, its chilling!
Up until a few years ago, I used both MySpace and Facebook. Now I just use Facebook, for the reason that with Facebook I am 100% less likely to be confronted with horrible flashing graphics and stupid music when I try to get to someone's page. If that makes me hoity toity, so be it.
What Facebook needs in order to complete its respectability is a way to share one billion fucking online quizzes where it can be determined what fucking color or what fucking Disney character somebody is.
And don't worry, MySpace will be retro-cool with its 1997 GeoCities graphical setup in a few years. If acid-washed jeans can make a comeback...
There are already a million online quizzes on Facebook on the subjects you mention.
Do they have a quiz
to determine how well you
perceive sarcasm?
actually, yes :)
Interesting article, thanks for highlighting it.
When I quit using MySpace (I was using MySpace and Facebook simultaneously for a period of time), it was because of things such as:
1) The ability for people to mess with their pages and put on all kinds of flashing, blinking graphics, eye-sore wallpaper, 500 pictures that took ages to load, and music that started when you opened a page without any user input. Sometimes it was so doctored up that it just broke my browser. This, above all else, was what made Facebook more attractive to me than MySpace.
2) The sheer number of naked people. MySpace seemed to be a haven for women who wanted to post naked picture after naked picture, whereas Facebook either doesn't allow this or the atmosphere just doesn't cater to that sort of behavior.
3) MySpace was used by many like a dating site, and I was sick of getting solicitations from people I didn't know that included things like pictures of penii. Thanks, but no thanks.
4) Facebook seems to allow for more conversation and community than MySpace. Going to anyone's MySpace page seemed to yield nothing but lots of glittery graphics that said nothing but, "JUST SHOWING SUM LUV" or "THANKS FOR THE ADD".
5) MySpace had too many amateur bands sending out friend requests, I got to the point where I was deleting 5-10 a day from stupid bands that I'd never heard of and will never hear of again.
I'd be interested if anyone thought any (or all) of these points tie into the main article. I never thought about it in a class-based way.
This list pretty much sums it up. I was using MySpace and Facebook at the same time for a while but then I just deleted my MySpace account because I hadn't ventured onto the site in months.
Now, though, Facebook has become almost as irritating as Myspace. It's hardly "mature" to take a "Which Real Housewife Are You?!" or a "How Many Children Will You Have?!" quiz, or to blab about your baby's poopy diapers in your status updates. It's not a mature place; it's just a forum for middle class white people to be dramatic and idiotic.
It's embarassing. I only sign on to check messages at this point.
"It's not a mature place; it's just a forum for middle class white people to be dramatic and idiotic."
If you think these people are so dramatic and idiotic why are you friends with them?
I left MySpace for reasons 3 and 5. Taking off "straight" and "single" from my profile made the date requests disappear. As for 5, it's very rare that someone who's actually good sends a friend request, but it happens. But I prefer searching for music that I like and being friends with artists that I like, which is why I returned to MySpace.
I left myspace for basically the same reasons as you (plus, I had only joined because I had friends there, and once I joined I could never quite figure out what one was really supposed to do on myspace anyway). But -- although it seems that there exist some apparently rational reasons for leaving myspace, it is really interesting to me if this is playing out along race/class lines.
It's pretty clear to me that, with regards to social networking sites, people are first and foremost going to go where their friends are, regardless of good or bad design. So, at the very least, this seems to be pointing out that the social associations people have on the internet (which is supposed to be more "open" than everyday life) still adhere to roughly racial boundaries. The obvious conclusion is something most of us probably already know, but which can always use more visibility -- that we do not exist in a "post-racial" world in which everyone associates with everyone else regardless of race, that there are distinct racially-oriented communities that lead relatively independent lives in different locales from each other; and who here is surprised, then, that media attention and a certain degree of prestige seems to follow the white community?
That's a fascinating speech... it reminded me of another thing I'd read a while back, and sure enough, it's by danah boyd as well. It's called Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace... I think I found it through a boing boing link or something.
Anywho, it provides some fascinating food for thought... and I'm also quite implicated in it, as I made the jump from being primarily myspace to primarily facebook about three years ago and haven't really done much on myspace since. The thing that frustrated me about myspace was the constant porn spam in my mailbox and the constant friend requests from obvious bots... not to mention that the ads were a bit more garish and obnoxious.
I think there's a lot to be written about the role of aesthetics in the digital divide... the complaint I've heard most often by people who went from MS to FB was that MS was just too overwhelming, with all the obnoxious backgrounds and page layouts and pictures and ads and music and FB having a much more "clean" style. I'm sure the desire for a "clean" aesthetic is linked to the issues of race and class and social networks and all the other things that boyd highlights... but I think it would take someone with different analytical tools than me (I'm a rhetorician) to parse them out. I think the aesthetic divide has been undertheorized, or at least as far as I've seen it has been.
I'm no expert on aesthetics either, but I'll take a stab.
How about the very expectation that the product/service one is using should be convenient, sleek, functional, etc. I absolutely think there's a class factor in even realizing that you can complain about stuff like that, when you're so used to having to deal with whatever you can afford/what has been presented for you.
(First, I want to say that I think J.G. is right on for wanting a discussion of aesthetics/design as it relates to race issues, and I too really think this is an underconsidered area that could really use some attention).
I think maybe there's something to your idea, Arvilla, but I don't know that I want to paint it as some kind of lack of empowerment to choose the better option or something. I think there are a lot of people who genuinely prefer the less sleek/functional option, and maybe see it as more pleasantly familiar and more expressive of their own aesthetic sensibilities or some such. I mean, I know that I would prefer to live in a sort of endearingly beat up historical building and have to call the plumber all the time than I would a completely new sleek/stylized/efficient place, and I don't think this is because I don't feel like I have a right to pipes that work, or some such. Why should it be different for something like this?
Great point.
I agree with you here. I don't think this internet divide, or even some divides in society are necessarily racism. I think it is people choosing things, designs, gadgets that they are familiar with, that compliment their cultural background, etc. Also, people interact with whoever is in their network (a friend of a friend, etc.) And, both of these sites, and many others on the internet are completely free, and open to anyone who wants to join. People simply choose what appeals to them. I don't think this is racism, I'm sorry. It is a good study in culture, and what interests different subcultures, but not racism.
I said racism because a few other comments here brought up POC, etc. I also do not think this is classist, nor elitist though. Again, just people making choices, as revealing as those choices may be. It may be that people really are comfortable around others who share their own interests and values. It really may be just as simple as that. Why is there anything wrong with that? As long as one's rights aren't being trampled on?
I think that it is indicative of racial divides, and so do you, whether you couch it in the language of mere aesthetic "taste" or not. Being that I don't think these racial divides are inherent, I don't really have any choice but to decide that this is at least evidence of some kind of racism at play. Furthermore, as I said above, the fact that the media attention seems to follow what the white community does is pretty telling.
Or, in simpler terms, I don't think people "just" have tastes, I don't think things "just" happen to be more familiar to them, etc etc. I don't think the questioning ends there; I think that if it appears that there are consistent differences in "taste" along racial lines, the questioning begins there.
This article (which Boyd cites as providing quantitative work) concludes that African American and White usage of Facebook/MySpace is about the same, and that Hispanics use MySpace somewhat preferentially, and that Asian-Americans use Facebook somewhat preferentially, but Asian-Americans use Friendster much more than either Facebook or MySpace. It's not clear to me that this study supports Boyd's claim that "Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook". I found it interesting, as well, that Boyd seems to efface Asian-Americans from her discussion.
That study covers only college students.
I wonder where LiveJournal falls on the Facebook-MySpace continuum.
Maybe we're the kids in the back of the class playing Dungeons and Dragons.
LOL! I'm curious too, as I'm on both LJ and FB. I had a MySpace page for a short while, but left because of the reasons others state. Mainly, the annoying messages from total strangers and the browser-crashing pages with annoyingly loud music. I don't even go to the MS pages of people I know due to that music feature.
I'm not sure LJ can really compare, though, as social networks aren't necessarily fulfilling the same function as a journal. And now that LJ's development team is based in Russia, I have noticed being "friended" there by a few more spambots than usual. Fortunately, you can report them to get them shut down.
I didn't get on Facebook for the being in college thing, I actually use it to keep in touch with old friends from college and high school. (I'm almost 40) But I find the little quizzes entertaining. That's the lovely thing about this being a free country with free Internet access at the library: You don't have to visit a site you don't like.
LiveJournal had a rep for being a hookup site, at least when I joined four or five years ago. Some people I knew joined, but then everyone on my network just stopped using it because a lot them were married or in relationships and had no interest in internet dating.
This is wrong. Posted it incorrectly. As per my following comment, it was FRIENDSTER that had the hookup rep. Dratted overfast typing on my part!
Friendster had a rep for being a hookup site, at least when I joined four or five years ago. Some people I knew joined, but then everyone on my network just stopped using it because a lot them were married or in relationships and had no interest in internet dating.
actually, friendster was designed to be a dating site. The idea being that friends of friends have been "screened". That's why the comment section was labeled "testimonials"
I was just about to say the same thing: what about LiveJournal? Or Dreamwidth?
Facebook and MySpace are both for socializing online with people you know offline (who tend to be the same race as you), whereas LJ is a free-for-all with online and offline friend alike, and there's usually no photo of the user (other'n the userpic, which isn't usually of the account holder).
MySpace: Where people who can't write choose to write about having a life; which they don't actually have.
Facebook: where people who have lives go to read about other people who have lives and are disappointed because everyone they know is out living instead of spending time online writing about it. And find out which Smurf or Thunder-Cat they are.
Livejournal: where people who don't actually have lives go to write thousand-word essays about the life they don't actually have. Also they go there to bitch about people spending too much time online, this activity usually involves ten or more hours per day.
Twitter: Where people who can't write go to not write, a lot.
TypeKey: where people go to experience system outages and server errors because "real-life" isn't providing the level of frustration they need.
Fark: Where Drew goes to cash checks and sell books, where Wil Wheaton goes to see pictures of himself in that stupid clown-sweater, and where liberals and "libertarians" go to communicate through yelling and not reading each-others comments.
/I keed, I keed.
//Sorta
Sounded damn accurate to me! :)
This is hilarious! And true :)
Pedantic note: The teen quoted says "MySpace now is more like ghetto or whatever", not *a* ghetto. In current teenspeak, ghetto is largely used as an adjective, meaning, "poor; of or relating to the poor life...jury-rigged, improvised, or home-made (usually with extremely cheap or sub-standard components), yet still deserving of an odd sense of respect from ghetto dwellers and non-ghetto dwellers alike".
Obviously there are racist dimensions to "ghetto" being used in this way, but it's a little different in meaning than saying MySpace is "a ghetto" or "the ghetto".
Oops...definition should be attributed to urbandictionary.com
Hmm, I would argue that this is still a problem. Despite the fact that "ghetto" has essentially become an adjective as well as a noun, the meaning behind it hasn't changed much. "Ghetto" is an adjective used to describe something reminiscent of that which would be found in a ghetto. They don't mean fundamentally different things. What if the teen had used the adjective "gay" to describe a SNS that they perceived to be used mostly by genderqueer people as "uncool"?
But I think in this teen's mind, they *do* mean different things. I don't think she meant "MySpace is POC space", I think she meant "MySpace is crappy and tacky". Thus, her statement does not really support the points Boyd and Ann are trying to make about "white flight" online.
Let's continue with the above commentor's analogy of using the word "gay" as a negative term. When Eminem was called to task for his use of the term, his excuse was that when he said "gay" he didn't actually mean gay people, he wasn't actually picturing gay people in his mind--so his use of the term wasn't homophobic.
That's the same reason you're using to argue that using the word "ghetto" doesn't have racial connotations.
The word "ghetto" has certain racial and class associations in our society and while many white people may actually live in ghettos, to use the term in the United States immediately evokes the image of POC. While it might not be the speaker's intention to refer to POC in her/his statement, the term has racial and class baggage that it thrusts into the conversation. The speaker's intention is irrelevant, what matters is the effect.
Full disclosure – I have both a facebook and a myspace account (as well as livejournal and twitter). I also have a linkedin account that I access less than once every 3 months.
I tended to use myspace exclusively when facebook was limited in scope, but now have shifted to using facebook more often with myspace as more of an afterthought.
The reason for this is simple utility. Facebook has more options and a greater level of interact-ability with other websites (such as twitter) and better capability to control the friend lists and groups for privacy and multiple levels of access.
I don’t know if this is a case of white-flight as much as it is the unintended consequence of an older and more educated set of users (across racial/ethnic lines) switching to the service with better security and customization in function whereas myspace’s customizability is largely in appearance rather than functionality attracting a younger, more image-conscious crowd (across racial/ethnic lines).
I think this is a really interesting concept, but I wonder how much of it is more the co-opting of the language of racial/ethnic divides to discuss what could be more of a class/education divide. This isn’t to say that class/education and racial/ethnic issues don’t share a great deal of intersectionality, but I think that sometimes those intersections can make it hard to see which is the driver vs. the follower in these types of initial studies.
At any rate, I would be open and interested in learning more about the online divisions and electronic community self-selections. It’s a great topic for further research.
Firstly, a few of you comment that you're annoyed by all the stupid spammy quizzes that now clutter Facebook. If you're using Firefox, you can get rid of them. You simply need a Greasemonkey script called 'Quiz Be Gone', which is available here : http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/45892
Getting back on topic, while there are some very good points raised here, I think that it is not so much a class issue, but, more of a 'hippies Vs straights' issue.
Today's hippies (the Myspace users) tend to be people into indie, hip-hop, goth/emo, metal and so on as well as those who are artistically minded and those that like to shout their individuality.
Today's straights being those that are less concerned with cultural sub-genres as well as older people who are largely much less interested in such things anyway.
Also, I see a contradition in the argument that Myspace is garish, brassy, and is populated by those that are less well educated - for the simple reason that in order to go to town designing your myspace profile, you need a reasonably good knowledge of HTML/CSS. There are editors that can do the basics, but, the level to which a ot of people take it requires knowledge.
(Little known at the moment, but, that is starting to change, you can mke your own skin for Facebook.)
"Today's hippies (the Myspace users) tend to be people into indie, hip-hop, goth/emo, metal and so on as well as those who are artistically minded and those that like to shout their individuality.
Today's straights being those that are less concerned with cultural sub-genres as well as older people who are largely much less interested in such things anyway."
I don't really agree with this breakdown of myspace vs. facebook users though. My network on both places is only musicians, artists, and dancers. There is no difference in the artistic/non-artistic composition of each.
I also have a lot of FB friends who are writers, artists, and musicians. They are in their 30s and 40s, but their age is the only way they are different from creative people on Myspace. Creativity doesn't magically fizzle out when one hits 30s.
I'm sort of surprised that there haven't been more comments talking about MySpace pre and post Murdoch buyout. I think the line of demarcation didn't happen when facebook opened up to all users, but rather when MySpace started doing the full-screen washes of commercial advertisement and "talky" ads.
Also, I don't know what to think about these sweeping generalizations that white people like things cleaner and brown people like more color and ~!*PiZaZ*!~. Um. sounds less like "incisive observation" and sorta like racial stereotyping to me.
Maybe not wanting to be bombarded by commercials, unwanted solicitations from bands and pervs, and glittery wall messages is an interfering variable that transcends race?
I'd also be curious to see the correlation between which social networking site someone uses and what type of internet connection they have. All the blinking shit, animation, and wallpaper would crash my computer when I used myspace.
This was the biggest reason for my switch from MySpace to Facebook: my internet connection which, at the time, was dial-up. Therefore, the site without the auto-loading MP3s and zillions of graphics won by default.
I'm seeing a lot of commenters who are acting a bit defensive - "well, I like Facebook better, for x reasons, so there". I don't think Boyd is trying to tell people they have to stay on MySpace if they dislike it (or, you know, start talking about Michael Jackson on Twitter instead of the Iran election), instead she's pointing out that there are racial and class divisions which affect use of these different spaces, who and how we communicate, and our perception of what's going on. The fact that privileged individuals choose to use Facebook and less privileged individuals choose to use MySpace is important and worth discussing. Are we leaving people out of social movements because so much activism is centered around Facebook? Are we just reinforcing our elitist ideas in the online sphere? Even the arguments that MySpace is more cluttered and more prone to sexual activity - what does that say about less privileged groups that that's not a deterrent to using the space (for example, are Black women conditioned by a society which devalues their sexuality to expect/not complain about sexual advances, differently from White women?) The ways in which we communicate matter, the places where we assemble (virtually or IRL) matter.
It's not comfortable to realize that I'm one of those college-educated, middle-class white people who left MySpace for Facebook, or that I tend to assume that anything really important is going to show up on Twitter/Facebook (my social networking sites of choice), but it's worth thinking about.
This is the whole point. It seems a lot of people are not making the connection. People may have chosen Facebook for aesthetic and utilitarian reasons but that doesn't mean that the racial/class divide is just a coincidence. We need to look at why more POC are choosing to stay on Myspace and what the divide says about race relations today.
I think we have come so far inasmuch as many people (not necessarily people in this discussion) believe little or trivial racial/cultural variations like this can be swept under the rug and are not worth examining. The less racist we become as a society, the easier it is for the little things to get overlooked. Same goes for sexism. That's where "post-racism" and "post-feminism" came from. But we will never be past those things because it's an ongoing struggle and we need to continue examining these little inconsistencies.
Nothing is stopping POC, "underpriveleged" (whatever that means), or "less educated people" (there are many educated people on Myspace) from switching to Facebook. They simply don't choose to. I am failing to understand then, how this is a racist, or classist issue?
When I refer to underprivileged in scare quotes, by the way, I mean that it is hard to be underprivileged on the internet, since all of these sites are free to join, and do not take any considerable amount of knowledge to do so. So I don't understand why the term underprivileged is even being used in this topic.
I am failing to understand then, how this is a racist, or classist issue?
Yes. We're not simply talking about online trends here, as if they exist in a vacuum isolated from the larger culture -- the idea is that the trends that happen on the internet are indicative of something that is happening "in real life" (which seems pretty obvious to me). And in real life, peoples' tastes and preferences and options and cultural associations and even their very basic notions about what the world is like and how to interact with it are all colored by their orientation with respect to things like race and class.
How do y'all think the issue of anonymity and user names plays into the class divide? Myspace is as anonymous as you want it, but facebook requires users to register with their full names, presumably to take some of that wild west element out of social networking sites and promote accountability.
For what it's worth, I was first introduced to myspace back in 2003 by friends who wrote graffiti. They used their words (their tags) as their user name. The pictures the posted were their tags and throwies accompanied by pics of them posing with bandanas around their face. Relative anonymity was crucial for this culture, and there's no denying the role of graffiti in hip-hop culture.
Also, user names may better represent what young people of color are known by in their social circles. These nicknames are swiftly deactivated by Facebook.
For an even more extreme example, facebook has been deactivating the accounts of users with native surnames: http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-blocks-native-americans/ . I want to say I first saw this story here on feministing.
This is fascinating.
I'm white, educated...and on public assistance for a disability. I grew up working class. I was really, really hesitant to join any SNS because I didn't want anyone from my younger days messaging me and asking me what I was doing for a living - I am sheepish about not having a paying job. Facebook scared me because of the 'educated elite career' rep, but I got over it. With one or two exceptions, I don't seek out people I used to know when I was younger, but I don't reject their friend requests when they find me.
I joined Facebook less than three months ago, only because a bunch of people I knew from a band's fansite had FB profiles.
That sounds like a Myspace reason (at least according to the comments above and the cited speech), but in my/our case it isn't, because the band in question has a mainstream/major-label, predominantly white fanbase. There are plenty of fans of my vintage - I'm 35 - the fansite did a user survey and the 30s-40s range had the highest percentage of users, which is a striking contrast to most bands with a heavy internet fan presence.
We I hooked up with each other on FB because we were curious about each other after becoming friends on the fansite. It's cool 'meeting' people, putting real names and faces, families and hobbies to the screennames. There was a thread in that forum asking if anyone wanted to meet on Myspace, and the thread quickly died after a handful of teenagers responded. The Facebook thread had a lot more people saying, "Message me here and I'll add you!" And, yes, someone started our own Facebook group for 'older' fans.
As for those faces, families, and hobbies - FB has the capability for infinite picture-sharing, so people can upload tons of pictures of their kids, weddings/commitment ceremonies, and family functions. And users can refine privacy settings so that only people they want to see said pictures can see them. Those factors are less likely to come into play if users skew younger.
And yep, once I got an account, people I knew from high school, college, and my 20-something New York social life found me and friended me. My one and only experience with Myspace was when a woman 13 years younger told me to look her up - I had the same reactions as many of the commenters here - it took a million years to load, featured lurid, retina-searing layout and colors, weird music, and impossible-to-read comments (thanks to the wallpaper). I was not in the least tempted to create an account.
Myspace seems to be more of a "This is the flashy image I've created for myself"; Facebook seems to be more low-key and "This is just my life, simply stated."
As for Friendster, I created an account years ago and logged in maybe three times. A few people I know also had accounts but never used them, either. It had a reputation as a big hookup site, and I had (real-life) friends tell me they weren't going to join because they weren't interested in internet dating.
I'm not touching LinkedIn with a ten-foot pole because it's entirely career-focused, and I don't have a career.
Livejournal seems to require much more of a time commitment, given that the point is to write narrative entries on a regular basis.
A different kind of classism:
The best and the worst thing from my own perspective on the internet as someone who first got onboard back in the early 90's all revolves around the idea of access.
The degree of connectivity that the novice computer user now has is frankly amazing compared to what I was experiencing when I had to use winsock and know what a TCP/IP of FREE-PPP setting was.
The upshot is that I have been able to exchange ideas with people who do not share my (now pretty much irrelevant) level of technical acumen. Technical intellect is not even much of a signifier of general intellect and so I'm able to enrich my life to a greater degree in matters not generally associated with technical skill, philosophy and political theory, etc. Access provides a voice to people previously limited by the lack of desire to learn a bunch of crapola unrelated to their interests or lifestyle.
The down-side is that, at least to me, it seemed that while I may have run in to as many jerkoffs back in the old "IRC and bulletin board" days those jerkoffs at least shared enough common ground in education that you could actually win a debate (or lose one) on the merits of the debate and not on the ability to just get in the last insult after tiring out your "opponent".
The most acute downside, however, is that when it was all local BBS service the people you were likely to encounter were much more a part of a physical community; one that had frequent gatherings. I think the fact that you were very likely to have a tete-a-tete at some point kept things more civil.
I have met - and will be meeting - people from moderated internet forums that have a personal messaging function and require you to fill out a profile about yourself.
All of the above conditions are key; the fewer of them there are, the greater the discord, vitriol, and mayhem and the less likely there is to be a sense of community.
This has not gone unnoticed by Stuff White People Like (aka Stuff Privileged White Hipsters Like):
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/07/31/106-facebook/
I think I disagree with her analysis generally for all the 'technical' reasons raised by readers here which she overlooks.
ON THE OTHER HAND, they're called social networking sites for a reason. Its the rare person who's social networks uniformly comprise people from all classes, ethnicities, etc. So in some sense we shouldn't be surprised.
We're all apart of multiple 'sub-cultures' (white, catholic, Chicago, UCLA alumn, etc). With the way networks work the 'sub-cultures' impose a "stickiness" on migrating to a new site...but when enough of your friends do so, the trickle becomes a wave. Hence, FB. Tomorrow, who knows?
Another poster mentioned this, but I'd like to question this as well: FB requires first and last name, while MS doesn't. This has been a big issue for me as an activist networking on FB. I hate it. I'm wondering if that plays into anything?
Interesting article - one minor quibble that I didn't see anyone else mention: you're misspelling danah's name, her name is always in lowercase.
Interesting article - one minor quibble that I didn't see anyone else mention: you're misspelling danah's name, her name is always in lowercase (both first name and last name).
I think that the comment that MySpace is "more ghetto" was misinterpreted by you and, perhaps Boyd as well to mean something that it does not, thereby fulfilling your thesis. The 14 year old quoted did not say that MySpace is "a ghetto", she said it was ghetto. It's just highschool slang. We were saying it back in 1997. MySpace isn't a ghetto. It's just slow and esthetically unpleasing - jumbled, unclear, hard to find what you are looking for. People switched to Facebook because their friends did and MySpace became a ghost town. It remains a great space for bands to promote their music, but as far as social networking goes, MySpace just wasn't cutting it in comparison to the competition. The problem with academia is, and remains, that it is out of touch with what is current and what is actually happening in the real world. I agree whole-heartedly that the internet is far from "a Utopian paradise in which we are "all equal.", as it, like everything in society, does not exist in a cultural vacuum - gender, class, and racial inequity exist on the internet just as they do in other parts of society, but your argument and idolizing of Boyd's argument is based on misunderstanding, misinterpretation and a lack of connection to what is current and what is actually happening day-to-day with real people. The misunderstanding of the slang 'ghetto' to mean 'a ghetto' is an obvious sign of this. You are merely finding what you are looking for without actually participating in or understanding online culture and social networking sites.
I just saw that 'bifemmefatale' already pointed out the misunderstanding of the slang word 'ghetto' - sorry to have been repetitive...
Well I choose not to go to facebook and stick to MySpace only because I'm lazy and have no intentions of recreating a profile anyways....
Is anyone else annoyed by the MySpace is turning into a ghetto thing. As a young black (well mixed I guess) female this does annoy me especially when they mention people being black and brown. I didn't know us being non-white was a problem. And I'm from a very poor background I tend to want to be in more mature backgrounds as well. Which is why I go to sites like Feministing and such to talk to people. MySpace is only a thing I use to keep in touch with my friends since more of them are on MySpace. I feel like Boyd is a 14 year old that has no idea what she's talking about and has never been outside her wealthier background.
I think you're completely misinterpreting Danah Boyd's point. It's not your identity that is the problem, it's the idea that more privileged people may be avoiding spaces populated by less privileged people on purpose. And she's not 14.
I didn't mean Boyd, I meant the girl Kat but I got the names mixed up. Sorry for the mistake.
The 'real name' system for Facebook membership simply makes it more accessible for people genuinely wanting to get in touch with, or find old friends.
I see a completely different dynamic between the two sites. Searching for your old college buddy on Myspace will be an exercise in futility, as they could be called anything from x_babymomma2006_x to onethousandtearsofshame33.
While Myspace is now trying to encourage people to utilise the 'real name' option, it's too little too late.
Whereas Facebook makes it easy to find people and browse their friends lists to do a fair simulation of 'six degrees of separation' (instead of seeing chaotic lists of Myspace user names with absolutely no relevance to the person owning the profile).
Kitting your page out with bells, whistles, MP3's, gaudy colours and the like is the domain of a younger generation than the one I'm in - which is why I have a Facebook account and don't use Myspace.
I don't think it's as much a racial issue as an age issue.
To summarise: Facebook is actually about social networking - the functionality is designed for this purpose.
Myspace is not; it's more like a modern version of Geocities, where the page creation tools have been dumbed down so that you'll never have the urge to find out what code like '& nbsp' means. The fact that it has a 'social networking' aspect is, in my opinion, more accidental than intended.
I switched from MySpace to Facebook because I got sick of getting music played at me while opening a web page to see what my friend was up to, and because I kept getting add requests from random webcam girls. I was down for neither and jumped ship as soon as Facebook was available on my campus.
As pointed out by two previous commenters, the word "ghetto" is very poorly interpreted. The girl is not implying that it's "a ghetto" aka a place for people of lesser "social worth" to live. She's saying she finds myself old, tired, worn out and out of date. The misappropriation of the slang shows bias on the part of the researcher.
As for the racial divide between the two sites, it's interesting and all, but I think it's an Western thing. There's many people on Facebook from all over the world, even Brown and Black countries, to steal to usage of the words. There's also Facebook users in Korea, Japan and other Asian nations. India has a large Facebook using population, as does Iran. To say Facebook is for upper and middle class white folk, in and of itself, really ignores the whole Facebook community which is really a world wide collective of people.
Sure, they don't all talk to each other, but I'm really wondering about what kinds of research this person did -- or if they just looked at a certain group of people and say this or the other, said it was universal and rubber stamped it racist.
This is by no means to say that the internet is a place of complete equality. All places on the internet has problems with equality, which do need to be addressed, however I don't quite see the angle in this particular argument.
She's saying she finds myself old, tired, worn out and out of date.
Paging Freud! haha
finds MySpace, that is, not myself.
Hold on a sec, the girl says, "I'm not really into racism, but MySpace is ghetto..."
1) She wouldn't have qualifed the comment with "I'm not really into racism but..." if she weren't making a racist comment. She could just as easily have said, "I have a lot of black friends but..."
2) Anytime you call something or someone ghetto & you aren't actually referring to a real ghetto, its racist. Or, for you grammarians, if you use the word "ghetto" as an adjective, instead of a noun, its racist.
Take a look at the comments section of any blog & you shouldn't be surprised that real world biases find expression online.
While the word itself is very racially charged and implies racism, the colloquial use of the term does not take that fully into consideration.
What she did is if, say, she was going to say something along the lines of "I'm not ableist, but that place is retarded". It doesn't change the meaning of what it's trying to say, but acknowledges that the listener will probably assume, based on use of the word, that they are being ableist.
It's a way of distancing yourself from the other connotations of the word but acknowledging they exist, but saying it's not what you mean.
I didn't imply that real world biases aren't rife on the internet. I addressed that when I said this, as my last paragraph:
This is by no means to say that the internet is a place of complete equality. All places on the internet has problems with equality, which do need to be addressed, however I don't quite see the angle in this particular argument.
I'm questioning the angle taken to "observe" of the inequality, not the questioning the existence of it entirely.
Pfft. Social Science - you can create a problem out of anything!
Myspace was the Detroit of the internet even in it's heyday. And it's still a good place for bands to spread their music (Facebook - not so much) Have these researchers completely ignored the "Scene Kids" et all, a largely white middle class bunch who are by and large the most obnoxious friend-requesting set on myspace?
My myspace account had massive security problems and was repeatedly hacked and I found myself unfriending random people the hacker had spammed, and most of the 'customizable' features for the myspace accounts are just annoying to me (I don't want to hear your fucking music). I only joined the site to support my sisters band, and I only joined Facebook because I was sent a request from a friend (also, online scrabble).
I think a lot of older people use Facebook because it feels more socially acceptable with the very young vibe of Myspace.
Omg. You really think saying something is "the Detroit of the internet" isn't incredibly racially charged and problematic?
It's not the social scientists creating this problem...
I'm sorry, maybe I'm showing my "ignorance" here. But can you please explain to me how that expression "Detroit of the internet" is racist? With all of these Politically Incorrect terms running about nowadays, I want to be sure I don't ever inadvertently say something that could deem me a racist. Thanks.
Yesterday I wrote a post about The BET Awards, Racial Censorship on Twitter and danah boyd's essay titled, Digital White Flight: On Twitter and Race.
http://modelminority.blogspot.com/2009/07/digital-white-flight-on-twitter-and.html
The class and racial distinctions in the real world are brought into our and reflected in social networking communities.
~m.dot
That link mentions Twitter removed something called, "fakeassnigga."
My immediate assumption is that Twitter removed it because it sounded racist. It certainly sounds that way to me.
At the very least, "nigga" no matter the spelling is considered an offensive word. I think Twitter would also take down a screen name like "fuckmehard".
I left myspace because all of my college friends were alive and active on facebook, and facebook was in so many ways less of a pain in the ass to find people, play games, and manage your page. It also is better maintained (for use and protection against others) and just has more stuff to do.
i stayed on facebook because myspace became filled with idiot 13 year olds who couldn't read, write, or spell and were, well, 13 and acting like an idiot on the internet. For some reason, they seem to either be warier of facebook or better at staying out of my way now.
I don't know if it's a race issue so much as an age issue. MySpace seems to me to be the domain of young teens and pre-teens, which the music aspect seems to reinforce. Facebook, with it's full name networking, is populated by a lot more older people, in their 20s through to their 50s and above.
Having said that, I don't have MySpace of Facebook. I'll stick to LJ (and now DW), thanks ;) That's the place where young goths go to complain about goths who complain :P
I actually favour blogs more in general, because of the style of debate that often happens their. Social networking is not something I'm really into.
I'd just like to point out that most of danah boyd's studies on this issue are NOT scientifically grounded research studies.
If you go to her website and look up the original article she states several times that this isn't an academic research essay and wasn't set up to be a scientifically reliable and grounded study. I've seen different versions of talks that she's given based off of these interviews and sometimes this important piece of information is left out. Basically, she found some interesting pieces of information but they're very anecdotal and don't have a bunch of rigor behind them.
(Apologies but as a social scientist I have to jump through a lot of hoops to make sure my research meets the "qualifications" of science.)
However, this is still some very interesting information. I've used these articles in two different classes that I have taught in order to get students to think more deeply about the choices they make online and how that can play into larger cultural themes. It's ignited some very heated debates within the class as students really begin thinking about race and class within the US and how people pursue the goals of each in their daily lives. As a point of departure for some serious thinking boyd's essays are excellent.
"Fear of the "other" is core to white flight."
I find it kind of offensive that Boyd equates high school cliques with white flight.
I mean, in the case of Detroit, you had actual riots to polarize the community. In the case of high school people online, you have the opening up of facebook. So, um, what's the fear? And if she's arguing that whites hang with whites, democrats hang with democrats regardless whether they are online or offline....then where's the fear that's causing the migration? (Also, despite some interviews, can she actually prove that there was a huge migration?) What I'm trying to say is, if the white kids on myspace were scared off by "others", how did they get scared off if they weren't friends with 'others' to begin with?
When analyzing race and class online, I feel like one really needs to analyze the underlying interest that built the community rather than community itself. (i.e. facebook=college students, myspace=local bands and comedians) In that way, you can analyze race and class based on interests, and I think you can find some really interesting findings. For example, I used to be heavily involved the online/offline anime community....lots of race and class diversity there. It all depends on which interest you are looking at and what about that interest draws what types of people.
1.It's interesting how many folks were willing to comment about Boyd's work WITHOUT reading it.
2.Trust. The comment made on Twitter during the BET Awards makes it clear and present that our CLASS and RACE issues OFFLINE Are present with us online.
http://omgblackpeople.wordpress.com/
3.The Censoring of "Fakeassnigga" is material because two weeks ago, the trending topics for two days were "goodasspussy" and "goodassdick" and the tweets associated with these hash tags irritated me so much I stopped following people, relatively progressive people.
I WANTED TO ERASE THAT trending topic, and I tweeted this fact.
The issue isn't whether "fakeasnigga" is offensive. The issue is censorship, of whom, by whom and whether it is apart of larger phenomena around race and class.
4. Boyd wrote two papers.
One, "The Not So Hidden Hidden Politics of Class Online" is a crib sheet of a talk she gave,
and it comes out research on a much larger project, "Taken Out of Context, the American Teen Sociaility in Networked Publics."
The other essay is "Viewing American Class Divisions through Facebook and Myspace."
-She has ethnographic data
-She interview 90 teens across the country and analyzed 10K facebook/myspace profiles.
5. "Myspace, the Detroit of the internet."
What does it mean, if we are talking about how out class distinctions are being mirrored online,
and a commenter calls Myspace the Detroit of the internet?
Myspace has a disproproiately high number of black people. It's gritty. It's a hotbed for musical activity. It's well-known for its level of crime. It's been shriking in size. It'd saying calling Myspace "the Detroit of the internet" means the commenter just used an apt and colorful metaphor. Except I guess Myspace doesn't have anything analgous to the car industry. Wait. Neither does Detroit anymore. :-(
I really liked the article and thought it brought up some interesting points, but I felt like Boyd didn't give any direction as how we can begin to fix this problem. She makes the point that privileged people should not be condescending to the underprivileged, but what else should we be doing? Even if those of us who had abandoned MySpace went back to it, would that really solve the underlying racial divide?
Re-Detroit.
In order to have a productive conversation,
it is important to look at today through the lens of history.
1. The reason why Detroit is home to a large Black population is because of White Flight in the 60's.
White folks would have rather RIOT, than work along side Blacks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1943)
2.Myspace isn't shrinking in size, both sites are growing, the issue is WHO is flocking where, hence the importance of Boyd's work.
3.Calling Myspace the Detroit of the Internet. derisive, smug and condescending.
Detroit is a City that capitalism that left behind, and it looks as if California will soon the the state that Capitalism left behind. Our 3 World, Latin American state, if you will. Not because of Mexican folks, but it the policies are creating a State for The Elite and the people who serve them.
Are you the original person who made the comment? If not, why do you have so much invested in defending it?
4. Detroit is the future of this country.
Trippe barrel oil WILL change the game by 2020.