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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 7 - 23 May 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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> | Ready for grading. | | | | |
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> | | | | My Leisure is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Facebook as a Vehicle for Pecuniary Emulation) | | | Introduction | |
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< | The incredible popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper analyzes Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | >
> | The incredible popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption or leisure, this paper analyzes Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | | | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults | |
<
< | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. Although it now includes non-college students, Facebook's origins and focus inextricably tie it to higher education. Even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. In contemporary American society, just as in Veblen's time, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When one searches for a user on Facebook, the search results display the user's name and the schools s/he has attended. College affiliation is also the first information that appears in a user's profile. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | >
> | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. Although it now includes non-college students, Facebook's origins and focus inextricably tie it to higher education. Even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. In contemporary American society, just as in Veblen's time, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. When one searches for a user on Facebook, the search results display the user's name and the schools s/he has attended. College affiliation is also the first information that appears in a user's profile. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | | | | |
<
< | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, they are generally not able to engage in pecuniary emulation through buying expensive cars or houses. Instead, college students engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted. The website accomplishes this by providing a direct way to use time unproductively and by publicly keeping track of users' external leisure activities. | >
> | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, they are generally not able to engage in pecuniary emulation through buying expensive cars or houses. Instead, college students engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted.
Given the age group that most frequently uses Facebook, it does not take much imagination to suspect that the motivation behind all this conspicuous leisure has a distinctly biological basis. Here, as with the examples of conspicuous leisure provided by Veblen, a major goal of the consumer is to appear more sexually desirable by using conspicuous leisure to create a favorable invidious comparison with his peers. To make this even easier, Facebook doubles as a rudimentary dating website. Users can list their relationship status and what they are “looking for” with regard to the opposite sex. | | | Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure
Facebook is conducive to conspicuous leisure because the website itself provides numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they create profiles that reflect their interests and personalities. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Users can send private messages to one another, or they can write publicly on another user's profile "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its conspicuous leisure value. It allows users to publicly display their social conversations. | |
<
< | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting friends to complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Significantly, each of these applications keeps a detailed record of users' activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time one spends using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. | >
> | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting friends to complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Significantly, each of these applications keeps and displays a detailed record of users' activities. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time one spends using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. | | | Facebook as a Marker of Other Leisure | |
<
< | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted time spent off the site. User profiles list favorite books, movies, TV shows, and music. Users attempt to convey an impression of themselves that demonstrates that they have spent their leisure time in ways that highlight their taste. Pecuniary emulation takes the form of having read the right books, listened to the right bands, and generally subscribed to the canons of taste that dominate the user's peer culture. Profiles are meticulously crafted to reflect the proper taste. Facebook serves no direct function in enhancing one's external leisure. Instead, its value is in its ability to make the user's normal leisure more conspicuous. Social networking sites elevate unproductive activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed to the status of highly conspicuous leisure. | >
> | Facebook provides a public means of recording how users wasted time spent off the site. User profiles list favorite books, movies, TV shows, and music. Users attempt to convey that they have spent their leisure time in ways that highlight their taste. Pecuniary emulation takes the form of having read the right books, listened to the right bands, and generally subscribed to the canons of taste that dominate the user's peer culture. Profiles are meticulously crafted to reflect the proper taste. Facebook serves no direct function in enhancing one's external leisure. Instead, its value is in its ability to make the user's normal leisure more conspicuous. Social networking sites elevate unproductive activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed to the status of highly conspicuous leisure. | | | | |
<
< | Facebook also serves as a medium for documenting the social leisure time of user. One of the key features of the site is that it allows users to network by adding other users as their "friends." Once friended, a person must confirm the friendship before they are added. Each user's profile has a highly visible list of that person's "friends," complete with a numerical tally. Additionally, users can post photo albums on their profile. These photos provide evidence of parties, trips, or other leisure activities. The number of photos in which a user appears is displayed prominently in his profile. Social time is unproductive time, and Facebook allows users to make their leisure time more conspicuous by publicly posting a record of it. | >
> | Facebook also serves as a medium for documenting the social leisure time of users. One of the key features of the site is that it allows users to network by adding other users as their "friends." Each user's profile has a highly visible list of that person's "friends," complete with a numerical tally. Additionally, users can post photo albums on their profile as evidence of parties, trips, or other leisure activities. The number of photos in which a user appears is displayed prominently in his profile. Social time is unproductive time, and Facebook allows users to make their leisure time more conspicuous by publicly posting a record of it. | | | Conclusion | | |
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- This essay is unusually clear about how to make use of Veblen in one respect: the issue is whether Facebook's popularity can be accounted for by the ease with which it adapts itself to displays of personal leisure by those who engage in a form of pecuniary competition but have decidedly more leisure than they have consumable wealth. But it would be helpful to point out that Veblen's principle of economic evolution applies also to non-economic forms of status competition, and in the case of adolescents and young adults occupying the "long youth" period characteristic of the late-marrying post-Pill generations, popularity competition isn't primarily material. Facebook, as many people are beginning to notice, is really primarily about getting laid, as many institutions of the young are. It's competitions are more primary and Darwinian: people want to look popular because popular people are the people other people want to ... oh, never mind, you don't need me to tell you about it.
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- Which brings us to the second point. The CIA and Mark Zuckerberg may feel differently about the fact Facebook's turning out to be a fully-instrumented singles' bar, rather than the more comprehensive wired social network that could be data-mined to make predictive models of other kinds of people than young people with hormones to work off. Zuckerberg was supposed to be producing a dating site, after all, when he eloped with his partners' idea, while the CIA put money into his so-called business hoping that they'd be able to spy on you for the rest of your lives, and many more people than just you, rather than winding up with a system that would help them find their targets if their targets were sex- and status-obsessed twenty-somethings.
- You know that Veblen's purpose is to explain why practices last, not why practices arise. Therefore, as far as you're concerned, you're not writing about what Facebook's features are for, in any intentional sense. But this may be a serious mistake so far as the effect of the essay is concerned. You could perhaps have let your readers known that the purpose of the Facebook system is privacy invasion. Facebook-like technology could be created that would give everyone a web page that worked like the existing Facebook page, with all the same feeds and ridiculous PHP "applications" made of the computer programming equivalent of compressed-rubbish particle-board, but in which there was no centralized logging of who's doing what and to whom. Those logs, which are the artifact rather than necessary outgrowth of Facebook's existence, are a moment by moment record of everything 65 million people do with an average of 2.5 hours per week of their time: that is, a completely spied-on social world that contains 162.5 million hours a week of human behavior, the equivalent of completely bugging, in every room of every home and business, the tenth-largest city in the United States. Facebook's investors and managers believe that the effort to climb inside all those lives can be made to pay money. Those who are fools enough to use the service are getting crappy free web hosting, and a little software that is not as good as what is freely available, in return for destroying pretty much all their privacy, pretty much forever. But you don't say anything about that, being apparently uninterested.
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- Eben- I agree with your take on Facebook's dubious purpose and role in college life. However, incorporating an analysis of the "why" into my paper would have required a significant shift in the essay's focus. Ultimately I decided to leave it as a clear, though limited, analysis of how Facebook illustrates Veblen's thesis regarding the durability of economic institutions.
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 6 - 21 Apr 2008 - Main.EbenMoglen
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| | | -- DanielButrymowicz - 04 Apr 2008 | |
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< | This paper is ready to be read. | | | Introduction | | |
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> |
- This essay is unusually clear about how to make use of Veblen in one respect: the issue is whether Facebook's popularity can be accounted for by the ease with which it adapts itself to displays of personal leisure by those who engage in a form of pecuniary competition but have decidedly more leisure than they have consumable wealth. But it would be helpful to point out that Veblen's principle of economic evolution applies also to non-economic forms of status competition, and in the case of adolescents and young adults occupying the "long youth" period characteristic of the late-marrying post-Pill generations, popularity competition isn't primarily material. Facebook, as many people are beginning to notice, is really primarily about getting laid, as many institutions of the young are. It's competitions are more primary and Darwinian: people want to look popular because popular people are the people other people want to ... oh, never mind, you don't need me to tell you about it.
- Which brings us to the second point. The CIA and Mark Zuckerberg may feel differently about the fact Facebook's turning out to be a fully-instrumented singles' bar, rather than the more comprehensive wired social network that could be data-mined to make predictive models of other kinds of people than young people with hormones to work off. Zuckerberg was supposed to be producing a dating site, after all, when he eloped with his partners' idea, while the CIA put money into his so-called business hoping that they'd be able to spy on you for the rest of your lives, and many more people than just you, rather than winding up with a system that would help them find their targets if their targets were sex- and status-obsessed twenty-somethings.
- You know that Veblen's purpose is to explain why practices last, not why practices arise. Therefore, as far as you're concerned, you're not writing about what Facebook's features are for, in any intentional sense. But this may be a serious mistake so far as the effect of the essay is concerned. You could perhaps have let your readers known that the purpose of the Facebook system is privacy invasion. Facebook-like technology could be created that would give everyone a web page that worked like the existing Facebook page, with all the same feeds and ridiculous PHP "applications" made of the computer programming equivalent of compressed-rubbish particle-board, but in which there was no centralized logging of who's doing what and to whom. Those logs, which are the artifact rather than necessary outgrowth of Facebook's existence, are a moment by moment record of everything 65 million people do with an average of 2.5 hours per week of their time: that is, a completely spied-on social world that contains 162.5 million hours a week of human behavior, the equivalent of completely bugging, in every room of every home and business, the tenth-largest city in the United States. Facebook's investors and managers believe that the effort to climb inside all those lives can be made to pay money. Those who are fools enough to use the service are getting crappy free web hosting, and a little software that is not as good as what is freely available, in return for destroying pretty much all their privacy, pretty much forever. But you don't say anything about that, being apparently uninterested.
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 5 - 07 Apr 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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< | It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | | |
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< | My Leisure is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Sculpting Identity Through Facebook) | >
> | My Leisure is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Facebook as a Vehicle for Pecuniary Emulation) | | |
-- DanielButrymowicz - 04 Apr 2008 | |
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< | This is a draft. Comments are welcome. | >
> | This paper is ready to be read. | | | Introduction | |
<
< | The incredibly popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper will analyze Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | >
> | The incredible popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper analyzes Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | | | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults | |
<
< | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. It is currently expanding in scope to include older and younger demographics, but the majority of its users are college students and recent graduates. Due to its origins, Facebook is inextricably tied to college, and even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. Veblen viewed education (particularly in the humanities) as evidence of wasted time. In contemporary American society, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and moreover that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When your information appears to viewers on Facebook, the colleges you have attended are listed directly under your name. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | >
> | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. Although it now includes non-college students, Facebook's origins and focus inextricably tie it to higher education. Even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. In contemporary American society, just as in Veblen's time, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When one searches for a user on Facebook, the search results display the user's name and the schools s/he has attended. College affiliation is also the first information that appears in a user's profile. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | | | | |
<
< | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, the manner of conspicuous consumption employed by the greater society is not entirely applicable to this demographic. College students are generally unable to engage in pecuniary emulation by buying expensive cars or houses, for example. Instead, college students can engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted. The website accomplishes this by offering direct opportunities to publicly waste time and also by recording other leisure activities that were not accomplished through the site. | >
> | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, they are generally not able to engage in pecuniary emulation through buying expensive cars or houses. Instead, college students engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted. The website accomplishes this by providing a direct way to use time unproductively and by publicly keeping track of users' external leisure activities. | | | Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure | |
<
< | The first way in which Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure is directly. The website itself presents numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Importantly, though, Facebook has two messaging options. Users can send private messages, or they can write a message publicly on another user's "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its conspicuous leisure value. It allows users to waste time publicly and provides evidence of social status, implying other leisure activities. | >
> | Facebook is conducive to conspicuous leisure because the website itself provides numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they create profiles that reflect their interests and personalities. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Users can send private messages to one another, or they can write publicly on another user's profile "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its conspicuous leisure value. It allows users to publicly display their social conversations. | | | | |
<
< | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting your friends to, for example, complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Each of these applications keeps a detailed record of your activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time you have spent using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. | >
> | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting friends to complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Significantly, each of these applications keeps a detailed record of users' activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time one spends using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. | | | Facebook as a Marker of Other Leisure | |
<
< | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted the time they did not spend directly on the site. User profiles list favorite books, movies, TV shows, and music. By listing these items, users attempt to convey an impression of themselves that demonstrates that they have spent their leisure time in ways that highlight their taste. Pecuniary emulation takes the form of having read the right books, listened to the right bands, and generally subscribed to the canons of taste that dominate the user's peer culture. User profiles are meticulously crafted to reflect the proper taste. In this regard, Facebook serves no direct function in enhancing conspicuous leisure beyond the internet. Instead, its value is in its ability to make the user's normal leisure more conspicuous. Social networking sites elevate unproductive activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed to the status of highly conspicuous leisure. | >
> | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted time spent off the site. User profiles list favorite books, movies, TV shows, and music. Users attempt to convey an impression of themselves that demonstrates that they have spent their leisure time in ways that highlight their taste. Pecuniary emulation takes the form of having read the right books, listened to the right bands, and generally subscribed to the canons of taste that dominate the user's peer culture. Profiles are meticulously crafted to reflect the proper taste. Facebook serves no direct function in enhancing one's external leisure. Instead, its value is in its ability to make the user's normal leisure more conspicuous. Social networking sites elevate unproductive activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed to the status of highly conspicuous leisure. | | | | |
<
< | Facebook also serves as a medium for documenting the leisure time of users more directly. One of the key features of the site is that it allows users to network by adding other users as their "friends." Once friended, a person is not added to your total unless they accept. Each user's profile has a highly visible list of that person's "friends," complete with a numerical tally. Additionally, users can post photo albums on their profile. These photos provide evidence of parties, trips, or other leisure activities. The number of photos a user appears in is displayed prominently in the profile. Since social time is unproductive time, Facebook allows users to make their leisure time more conspicuous by publicly posting a record of it. | >
> | Facebook also serves as a medium for documenting the social leisure time of user. One of the key features of the site is that it allows users to network by adding other users as their "friends." Once friended, a person must confirm the friendship before they are added. Each user's profile has a highly visible list of that person's "friends," complete with a numerical tally. Additionally, users can post photo albums on their profile. These photos provide evidence of parties, trips, or other leisure activities. The number of photos in which a user appears is displayed prominently in his profile. Social time is unproductive time, and Facebook allows users to make their leisure time more conspicuous by publicly posting a record of it. | | | Conclusion | |
<
< | Veblen's thesis is that the vitality of economic institutions is a function of their ability to facilitate conspicuous leisure and consumption. Facebook is a near-perfect tool for publicizing leisure. As a result, it is incredibly popular. It has over 65 million users, and the average user spends 2.5 hours per day on the site. It is notable that Facebook itself does not cost users anything. It is therefore not direct pecuniary consumption. Instead, it acts as a surrogate for conspicuous consumption for a particular demographic (young adults, specifically college students). The site allows people without significant pecuniary strength to make direct pecuniary comparisons with their peers in the area of conspicuous leisure. The power to spend money lavishly is replaced with the power to spend time unproductively in ways that conform to accepted canons of taste.
thoughts to add: | >
> | Veblen's thesis is that the vitality of economic institutions is a function of their ability to facilitate conspicuous leisure and consumption. Facebook is a near-perfect tool for publicizing leisure. It is incredibly popular. The site has over 65 million users, and the average user spends 2.5 hours per day on the site. Facebook itself does not cost users anything. It is therefore not direct pecuniary consumption. Instead, it acts as a surrogate for conspicuous consumption for a particular demographic (young adults, specifically college students). The site allows people without significant pecuniary strength to make direct invidious comparisons with their peers in the area of conspicuous leisure. The power to spend money lavishly is replaced with the power to spend time unproductively in ways that conform to accepted canons of taste. | | | | |
<
< | Goffman- identity management
searching for other users to invidiously compare | | |
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 4 - 06 Apr 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="DanielButrymowiczIntro" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | -- DanielButrymowicz - 04 Apr 2008 | |
<
< | Outline:
Thesis: The massive popularity of the social networking site Facebook is at least partially due to its utility as a means of publicly displaying one's leisure activities.
I. Conspicuous Leisure and Consumption
Veblen argues that, in order to showcase power or importance, one needs to engage in a conspicuous display of pecuniary power. Initially, he claims, this consisted of "conspicuous leisure," in which one would absent himself from menial or vulgar labor. Subsequently, the focus of pecuniary emulation was shifted to conspicuous consumption. Consumption was a more highly visible means of conveying one's power. Among college students and recent graduates, Facebook has reopened the possibility of highly conspicuous leisure. This is especially useful for college students, the majority of who are not in a position to engage in significant pecuniary consumption.
II. Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure
Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time.
Additionally, Facebook has added "applications" over time that. These include games that can be played against other Facebook users, such as chess or Scrabble, as well as activities like making "stickers" to post on other profiles or even raising digital pets. Importantly, these activities are all publicly recorded on the user's profile. Anyone viewing can see your win/loss record in Scrabble, for example.
Finally, the hallmark feature of Facebook is that it tells any viewer exactly how many friends you have and who they are. Social time is obviously leisure time, and racking up a huge number of friends takes significant non-productive effort. In this same vein, members can create and join groups, all of which are listed in the user profile.
III. Marking Other Leisure
The beauty of Facebook is that in addition to being a direct waste of time, it also publicly displays the other ways in which you have wasted time. Users list their favorite books, movies, and music. This provides the opportunity for invidious comparison between users based on taste. Have they read the right books? Do they like cool music?
Facebook also allows users to post photo albums. These can provide direct visual evidence of time spent in leisure. Other users can "tag" you in photographs, and Facebook keeps a numerical tally of the number of photographs in which you appear.
Veblen describes how education itself is a fundamental form of conspicuous leisure. Facebook was created for college students, and the first information that people see about users is the schools they've attended.
IV. Conclusion
Facebook provides college students a means for direct and public invidious comparison with their peers. Since the fanbase of Facebook is skewed toward those who are not doing physical labor to begin with, the emphasis moves to pecuniary emulation and taste, with users attempting to present an image of themselves that comports with the proper standards of taste for their peer group.
Comments are welcome. | >
> | This is a draft. Comments are welcome. | | | Introduction
The incredibly popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper will analyze Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | |
<
< | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults | >
> | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults | | | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. It is currently expanding in scope to include older and younger demographics, but the majority of its users are college students and recent graduates. Due to its origins, Facebook is inextricably tied to college, and even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. Veblen viewed education (particularly in the humanities) as evidence of wasted time. In contemporary American society, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and moreover that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When your information appears to viewers on Facebook, the colleges you have attended are listed directly under your name. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | | | Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure | |
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< | The first way in which Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure is directly. The website itself presents numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Importantly, though, Facebook has two messaging options. Users can send private messages, or they can write a message publicly on another user's "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its true value. It allows users to waste time publicly and provides evidence of social status, implying other leisure activities. | >
> | The first way in which Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure is directly. The website itself presents numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Importantly, though, Facebook has two messaging options. Users can send private messages, or they can write a message publicly on another user's "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its conspicuous leisure value. It allows users to waste time publicly and provides evidence of social status, implying other leisure activities. | | | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting your friends to, for example, complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Each of these applications keeps a detailed record of your activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time you have spent using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users.
Facebook as a Marker of Other Leisure | |
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< | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted the time they did not waste directly on the site. | >
> | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted the time they did not spend directly on the site. User profiles list favorite books, movies, TV shows, and music. By listing these items, users attempt to convey an impression of themselves that demonstrates that they have spent their leisure time in ways that highlight their taste. Pecuniary emulation takes the form of having read the right books, listened to the right bands, and generally subscribed to the canons of taste that dominate the user's peer culture. User profiles are meticulously crafted to reflect the proper taste. In this regard, Facebook serves no direct function in enhancing conspicuous leisure beyond the internet. Instead, its value is in its ability to make the user's normal leisure more conspicuous. Social networking sites elevate unproductive activity that would have otherwise gone unnoticed to the status of highly conspicuous leisure.
Facebook also serves as a medium for documenting the leisure time of users more directly. One of the key features of the site is that it allows users to network by adding other users as their "friends." Once friended, a person is not added to your total unless they accept. Each user's profile has a highly visible list of that person's "friends," complete with a numerical tally. Additionally, users can post photo albums on their profile. These photos provide evidence of parties, trips, or other leisure activities. The number of photos a user appears in is displayed prominently in the profile. Since social time is unproductive time, Facebook allows users to make their leisure time more conspicuous by publicly posting a record of it.
Conclusion
Veblen's thesis is that the vitality of economic institutions is a function of their ability to facilitate conspicuous leisure and consumption. Facebook is a near-perfect tool for publicizing leisure. As a result, it is incredibly popular. It has over 65 million users, and the average user spends 2.5 hours per day on the site. It is notable that Facebook itself does not cost users anything. It is therefore not direct pecuniary consumption. Instead, it acts as a surrogate for conspicuous consumption for a particular demographic (young adults, specifically college students). The site allows people without significant pecuniary strength to make direct pecuniary comparisons with their peers in the area of conspicuous leisure. The power to spend money lavishly is replaced with the power to spend time unproductively in ways that conform to accepted canons of taste. | | | | |
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> | Goffman- identity management
searching for other users to invidiously compare | | |
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 3 - 06 Apr 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | | | II. Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure | |
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< | Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time. In order to begin using the website, people must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making it and maintaining it. | >
> | Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time. | | | Additionally, Facebook has added "applications" over time that. These include games that can be played against other Facebook users, such as chess or Scrabble, as well as activities like making "stickers" to post on other profiles or even raising digital pets. Importantly, these activities are all publicly recorded on the user's profile. Anyone viewing can see your win/loss record in Scrabble, for example. | | | Comments are welcome. | |
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< | Section I | >
> | Introduction | | | | |
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< | Subsection A | >
> | The incredibly popularity of social networking websites among young adults can be explained by their utility as a means of publicizing one's leisure activities. Taking as a start Veblen's theory that the durability of economic institutions depends on their ability to facilitate conspicuous consumption, this paper will analyze Facebook.com as an example of how networking sites enable users to make their consumption and leisure activities more conspicuous. | | | | |
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> | Conspicuous Leisure Among Young Adults | | | | |
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> | Facebook was originally conceived as a means of allowing college students to network with their peers. It is currently expanding in scope to include older and younger demographics, but the majority of its users are college students and recent graduates. Due to its origins, Facebook is inextricably tied to college, and even at this basic level it is a tool for conspicuous leisure. Veblen viewed education (particularly in the humanities) as evidence of wasted time. In contemporary American society, attending college is generally a mark of pecuniary power. It shows that one's family is able to afford the expensive tuition and moreover that one can afford to forego any significant income for several years. When your information appears to viewers on Facebook, the colleges you have attended are listed directly under your name. Facebook therefore provides a public forum for users to showcase the pecuniary power that inheres in attending college. | | | | |
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> | However, since most Facebook users (and certainly most college students' peers) are college students themselves, simply attending college is not enough to make a favorable invidious comparison. Further, since college students typically do not have a significant income, the manner of conspicuous consumption employed by the greater society is not entirely applicable to this demographic. College students are generally unable to engage in pecuniary emulation by buying expensive cars or houses, for example. Instead, college students can engage in pecuniary emulation through conspicuous leisure activities. Facebook allows users to "keep up with the Joneses" by keeping a record of the time they waste and the activities on which it is wasted. The website accomplishes this by offering direct opportunities to publicly waste time and also by recording other leisure activities that were not accomplished through the site. | | | | |
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> | Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure | | | | |
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> | The first way in which Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure is directly. The website itself presents numerous opportunities for the public unproductive use of time. When users join the site, they must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making and maintaining it. Further, Facebook acts as a messaging device. Importantly, though, Facebook has two messaging options. Users can send private messages, or they can write a message publicly on another user's "wall." The redundancy of the "wall" function highlights its true value. It allows users to waste time publicly and provides evidence of social status, implying other leisure activities. | | | | |
>
> | Facebook has also recently expanded to include third party "applications," of which there are now over 20,000. These applications allow users to engage in a number of interactive activities through the Facebook site itself. Some allow users to challenge one another in games like chess or Scrabble. Others are longer, multi-person games that involve enlisting your friends to, for example, complete the Oregon Trail or fight in a virtual pirate war. Some applications are more basic, and allow you to create "stickers" or "graffiti" to put on others' profiles. Each of these applications keeps a detailed record of your activities. My Facebook profile, for example, shows my win/loss record in chess, and ranks me against other users. Facebook's value as a vehicle for pecuniary emulation is due in large part to the fact that it publicizes how much time you have spent using it, thus facilitating conspicuous leisure and inviting invidious comparisons with other users. | | | | |
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> | Facebook as a Marker of Other Leisure | | | | |
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> | In addition to providing opportunities for direct conspicuous leisure activities, Facebook also provides a public means of recording how users wasted the time they did not waste directly on the site. | | | Subsection B |
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 2 - 06 Apr 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted. | |
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< | My Consumption is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Sculpting Identity Through Facebook) | >
> | My Leisure is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Sculpting Identity Through Facebook) | | |
-- DanielButrymowicz - 04 Apr 2008 | |
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> | Outline: | | | | |
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< | Comments are welcome. | >
> | Thesis: The massive popularity of the social networking site Facebook is at least partially due to its utility as a means of publicly displaying one's leisure activities.
I. Conspicuous Leisure and Consumption
Veblen argues that, in order to showcase power or importance, one needs to engage in a conspicuous display of pecuniary power. Initially, he claims, this consisted of "conspicuous leisure," in which one would absent himself from menial or vulgar labor. Subsequently, the focus of pecuniary emulation was shifted to conspicuous consumption. Consumption was a more highly visible means of conveying one's power. Among college students and recent graduates, Facebook has reopened the possibility of highly conspicuous leisure. This is especially useful for college students, the majority of who are not in a position to engage in significant pecuniary consumption.
II. Facebook as Conspicuous Leisure
Facebook facilitates conspicuous leisure on two levels. The first is direct: Facebook itself is an unproductive use of time. In order to begin using the website, people must create a profile that reflects their interests and personality. Users carefully sculpt these profiles and many update them frequently. Simply having a Facebook profile reflects a certain amount of leisure time invested in making it and maintaining it. | | | | |
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< | Preliminary thoughts: | >
> | Additionally, Facebook has added "applications" over time that. These include games that can be played against other Facebook users, such as chess or Scrabble, as well as activities like making "stickers" to post on other profiles or even raising digital pets. Importantly, these activities are all publicly recorded on the user's profile. Anyone viewing can see your win/loss record in Scrabble, for example. | | | | |
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< | This paper will discuss how online networking sites (specifically facebook) allow people to consciously sculpt their identity and present a vision of who they are to the world. (This is a form of identity management, Goffman). Facebook allows people to create an identity primarily through making their consumption more conspicuous. | >
> | Finally, the hallmark feature of Facebook is that it tells any viewer exactly how many friends you have and who they are. Social time is obviously leisure time, and racking up a huge number of friends takes significant non-productive effort. In this same vein, members can create and join groups, all of which are listed in the user profile. | | | | |
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< | This occurs on two levels. | >
> | III. Marking Other Leisure | | | | |
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< | First, using facebook is direct conspicuous consumption because it is a waste of time. Facebook further facilitates the unproductive use of time through "applications" that allow you to do everything from hatch and raise a baby dinosaur to play scrabble against your friends. (Facebook tracks and displays the health of your Triceratops and your win/loss record in scrabble). In sum, Facebook both allows you to waste time and shows all of your friends exactly how much time you've wasted. | >
> | The beauty of Facebook is that in addition to being a direct waste of time, it also publicly displays the other ways in which you have wasted time. Users list their favorite books, movies, and music. This provides the opportunity for invidious comparison between users based on taste. Have they read the right books? Do they like cool music? | | | | |
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< | Second, facebook allows you to publicly show how you have wasted the time you did not waste directly on facebook. Participants list books they've read, movies they've seen, and the activities they are involved with. They can post photo albums of trips they've taken or events they've gone to. And, of course, the hallmark of the site is that it keeps a direct numerical tally of how many friends you have made (evidence of time spent in social settings). Further, the most public information on facebook is what schools you are affiliated with. Since, Veblen argues, education is a huge outlet for conspicuous leisure, the basic premise of facebook is one of making your leisure more conspicuous. | >
> | Facebook also allows users to post photo albums. These can provide direct visual evidence of time spent in leisure. Other users can "tag" you in photographs, and Facebook keeps a numerical tally of the number of photographs in which you appear. | | | | |
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< | The key feature of facebook is that it is highly public. As Veblen describes, conspicuous leisure gave way to conspicuous consumption at least partially because consumption is a more visible sign of pecuniary strength. Facebook makes conspicuous leisure more practical because it provides a venue for publicly advertising your leisure activities in addition to being itself a mechanism for the conspicuous waste of time. | >
> | Veblen describes how education itself is a fundamental form of conspicuous leisure. Facebook was created for college students, and the first information that people see about users is the schools they've attended. | | | | |
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> | IV. Conclusion
Facebook provides college students a means for direct and public invidious comparison with their peers. Since the fanbase of Facebook is skewed toward those who are not doing physical labor to begin with, the emphasis moves to pecuniary emulation and taste, with users attempting to present an image of themselves that comports with the proper standards of taste for their peer group.
Comments are welcome. | | | Section I |
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DanielButrymowicz-SecondPaper 1 - 04 Apr 2008 - Main.DanielButrymowicz
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| META TOPICPARENT | name="DanielButrymowiczIntro" |
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It is strongly recommended that you include your outline in the body of your essay by using the outline as section titles. The headings below are there to remind you how section and subsection titles are formatted.
My Consumption is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Sculpting Identity Through Facebook)
-- DanielButrymowicz - 04 Apr 2008
Comments are welcome.
Preliminary thoughts:
This paper will discuss how online networking sites (specifically facebook) allow people to consciously sculpt their identity and present a vision of who they are to the world. (This is a form of identity management, Goffman). Facebook allows people to create an identity primarily through making their consumption more conspicuous.
This occurs on two levels.
First, using facebook is direct conspicuous consumption because it is a waste of time. Facebook further facilitates the unproductive use of time through "applications" that allow you to do everything from hatch and raise a baby dinosaur to play scrabble against your friends. (Facebook tracks and displays the health of your Triceratops and your win/loss record in scrabble). In sum, Facebook both allows you to waste time and shows all of your friends exactly how much time you've wasted.
Second, facebook allows you to publicly show how you have wasted the time you did not waste directly on facebook. Participants list books they've read, movies they've seen, and the activities they are involved with. They can post photo albums of trips they've taken or events they've gone to. And, of course, the hallmark of the site is that it keeps a direct numerical tally of how many friends you have made (evidence of time spent in social settings). Further, the most public information on facebook is what schools you are affiliated with. Since, Veblen argues, education is a huge outlet for conspicuous leisure, the basic premise of facebook is one of making your leisure more conspicuous.
The key feature of facebook is that it is highly public. As Veblen describes, conspicuous leisure gave way to conspicuous consumption at least partially because consumption is a more visible sign of pecuniary strength. Facebook makes conspicuous leisure more practical because it provides a venue for publicly advertising your leisure activities in addition to being itself a mechanism for the conspicuous waste of time.
Section I
Subsection A
Subsub 1
Subsection B
Subsub 1
Subsub 2
Section II
Subsection A
Subsection B
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