Twitter and Facebook | Nothing But “A Place To Pick Each Other’s Fur”

February 24th, 2010 | Author: ADM

I crossposted a James Cameron Vanity Fair interview to my Posterous feed yesterday because something he’d mentioned to interviewer Krista Smith about Facebook, Twitter, and social media – more generally — intrigued me. So much so, in fact, that I needed to stretch my thinking about it here (boldface by me):

Krista Smith: Do you Twitter and pay attention to all of that?

James Cameron: No I don’t. I don’t Tweet because I can’t think of anything I’d want to discuss with somebody that I could explain in 25 words or less, 140 characters or whatever it is, nor would I be particularly interested in their answer. And I think it’s forcing people to think in these kinds of sound-bytes, and you can’t think in sound-bytes. But on the other hand it will all level out. [Zoologist] Desmond Morris could explain it easily: it’s just primate grouping—people just need to group. They just need to pick each other’s fur, and that’s what it is, all day long, all this Facebook, Twittering, and texting is all just primate social grooming, you know? And if it brings us closer together as a kind of a mobile consciousness and lets people think of each other that way, then it’s fine. Problem is I had this kind of idealistic view of what the Internet could be: that you could have friends in Spain and in China, and that you could be connected to people and their strife. I had friends working at orphanages in Burma and things like that and I’m sending them money. I thought, ‘Wow, the Internet can really combat tyranny. It can bring us together, it can give us an appreciation of other cultures.’ And unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The Internet is used so that people can find somebody out of the other six billion people in the planet that are just like them, and so it’s this self-organizing principle that puts you always with a reinforcing group, not a group that challenges you.

A place to pick each other’s fur…hrm…fascinating.

Indeed, to strenuously argue with Cameron here would be difficult because ultimately what speaks volumes about the director is his prosperous moviemaking track record. Avatar is set to become yet another billion dollar revenue-generating franchise and with its box office mojo – with Avatar’s production budget estimates hovering in the rarefied $400 million range – Cameron likely has an iron lock on the two sequels he has planned which are sure to follow shortly. Since it’s hard to argue with success, surely there must be something about Cameron’s thinking that’s entirely justified, otherwise he wouldn’t be, well…James Cameron.

Let’s parse Cameron’s remarks about social media out into two categories: where I agree, and where I disagree.

Where I Agree With James Cameron:

the media does indeed overinflate the importance of being socially active for practically all of life’s daily online duties, to the extent that users have become as addicted to Facebook and Twitter as they once were to “electronic mail” when it first emerged during the mid- to late-‘90s. I remember those days well.
most Facebook status updates and functions are shallow, inane, and aimless. The cumulative hours and days its users devote to covering, passing on, and embellishing upon the amateurish drivel cascading forth at most Facebook Walls staggers the rational mind. These are all stolen creative moments throughout one’s day when people could be otherwise more productively engaged.
the minority who chooses instead to avoid Facebook’s insanity and more intelligently drive traffic to their own websites, where it would surely be better monitored and controlled, are dwindling as the months pass. Those who choose to remain above the social media fray are somehow eventually hoodwinked into joining the fold or risk a form of online ostracism, becoming members of the hapless ranks of online have-nots.
Facebook’s design and functionality are fluid beasts. Given the site’s recent track record of continuous and unexpected change, Facebook appears set to remain in continuous future flux. If the past is any sort of reliable guide, how Facebook shall look a year from today won’t in any way resemble how it functions presently. Worse, its millions of global users (400 million and rising) will tacitly comply with this perpetual state of “work-in-progress-ness” with increasingly fewer exceptions the deeper the Facebook interface burrows itself into their consciousness. After overcoming the censure Facebook faced to its first major design hurdle a year or so ago, the site’s braintrust remains firmly in control of the operation, even boasting of extraordinary growth surges at a time when most companies would lose vigorous support as part of such an interruptive and major brand redesign. Think about it. How many other real world companies would be able to pull off this sort of continuous iteration without at least losing the goodwill of a large chunk of their online constituency?
the stifling uniformity of Facebook acts as a damper on creativity. Rather than encouraging novelty and risk-taking, Facebook corrals its users – very much like an online bovine herd – into the limited confines of its interface and condemns anything residing beyond the “paddock” to the outside. When this so-called “Facebook revolution” collectively overcame us, is beyond me.

Where I Disagree With James Cameron:

I’ve found Facebook to be a great sandbox for idea play. Finding out what potentially works, refiguring what doesn’t. The immediacy of being able to tap into a ready network of people at a few clicks of a button to poll them for feedback is a very alluring prospect.
the Facebook interface remains flexible enough so that users can customize it for their own needs. Personally, I use Facebook as a repository of great links that “Friends” can cherry-pick from at will. I also call attention to things I think people should read. The best of the best, so to speak. Since people are already at Facebook “picking each other’s fur,” placing things there is a smart business move and almost a “no brainer.”
the commercial potentials of having captive audiences (Egs. Fan Pages and Facebook Groups) is something that sails high above the cloudy aims of the “fur picking” tribal masses who are mainly taking up space at Facebook without any sort of a focused agenda.
it’s nothing for an A-List director like Cameron (or any other Hollywood star, for that matter) to dismiss Facebook’s networking potentials entirely out of hand. But for those bootstrapping their own projects or looking for a leg up on their competition, Facebook happens to be a good one-stop shop for everything they might be looking for.
if Facebook becomes the de facto online standard for online business or for verifying a user’s authenticity (and trends seem to be indicating that it will), Cameron and Co. might be singing a different tune. Given how rapidly-evolving the SNS movement has been in recent years, “fur picking” might become the new normal. Face facts. Styles change, people change. Even James Cameron doesn’t sport his characteristic scraggly beard any longer. Such is the nature of things, is it not?

So Now A Word From You:

What do you think about Facebook? Do you agree with Cameron’s views that it’s little short of a Neanderthal’s encampment or is Facebook evolving into something else, something better?

I look forward to your responses in the comments below…