My Leisure is More Conspicuous Than Yours! (Sculpting Identity Through Facebook)

-- 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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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 waste directly on the site.

Subsection B

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