The Final Countdown

Dear World,

It is true; the last days are upon us for my blog. My assault on Facebook and the unique culture it has created is indeed done. But stop your crying! Weep no more my friends! It has been a good run and I hope that all of you have enjoyed reading this blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I ask that your remember the good times…

In the first post we journeyed into what the mission of this blog would be, and how I would go about detailing and collecting this information. I stated that my goal was to learn why Facebook is so addictive and so exponentially popular, and it came down to this. Facebook’s magic lies in its objective and I’m not talking about world dominance like the computer from the movie War Games, I’m talking about Facebook’s mission to unite the entire world under a website that allows for interpersonal communication. What Facebook has done, and what it originally sought to do is establish a website that was capable of directly imitating the social experience perhaps even superseding this experience. By employing a variety of different web tools and consolidating them into a site geared for social interactions Facebook has effectively derived a new form of communication. This conglomeration takes photo’s, music, videos, writing, blogging, drawing, games and various other forms of communication and makes them interact and “play nice”. You can “comment” on friends “photo” you could film a video on a friends wall, the list goes on and on. The point is that Facebook has taken the best of every realm of communication and put it in a neat easy to use package which focuses on social interaction. Facebook is in a sense the voice of our generation, perhaps it will remain the voice of generations to follow, or perhaps it will be replaced. Facebook has made its mark on a generation, establishing itself as vital form of human interaction, and I believe this form to be here to stay.

Me doing research on Facebook...kind of

Jake Studying by Jake Skinner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

"Frankly Hollywood, Zuckerburg Doesn't Give a Damn"

Ahoy!

If Columbia Pictures was looking for a large and easily accessible target demographic they found it. Facebook’s membership is now well over four million people and counting; if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country in the world. The point of this statement is to illustrate the fact that even if this Columbia Picture’s  “The Social Network” sucked, it would still rake in more cash than most blockbusters could ever dream of. But the fact is, “The Social Network” didn’t suck, in fact it was anything but a disappointment.  Apparently Facebook’s genius and intrigue translates well on the big screen, but enough said let’s get to reviewing!

Plot:  The story begins in a small masschuets pub with Zuckerburg, played by Jesse Eisenburg, spilling his college fears out to Erica Albright, Rooney Mara, at a speed equitable to an auctioneer. This in media res beginning sets the tone for a fast paced drama leaving no time to catch your breath. To avoid mere plot summary and perhaps spoiling the movie for those who live on a different planet and have not seen it yet, I will simply comment on plot as a whole rather than specific plot action.

Overall I felt that Fischner handled the plot well, though he might have added some jazz for entertainment’s sake, like Zuckerburg’s obsession with final’s clubs, nevertheless the plot moved naturally. Relying on the audience’s fascinations with Zuckerburg’s idiosyncrasies, Fischner weaves a tale of friendship and betrayal, leaving one to ask is it even at all possible to have friendships in the realm of big business, a question whose answer remains up to the interpretation of audience. Fischner chose to focus on the effect of Facebook’s effect on Zuckerburg’s relationship, mainly his relationship with Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew  Garfield. Thus his motion picture has a wider appeal to audience who might have fallen behind when characters began discussing computer-based algorithms and advanced coding.  Over all “The Social Network” is not a story of the genesis and maturation of Facebook, but rather the story of relationships and the effect success and greed in tandem has on those relationships. One is left with a sense of sadness at the movies conclusion when it appears that the man who created a website which allows one to have friendships with thousands of people, has lost the only one friendship he truly cared about. In this sense, “The Social Network” is a modern day Greek tragedy, accompanied by a Shakespeare-esque betrayal. Kudos to you Daniel Fischner, your film has reached a plateau that modern day film rarely reaches on the big screen, and for this I thank you.

Characters:  Words cannot describe Jesse Eisenburg’s execution of his role as Mark Zuckerburg, and if they could they would contain semblances of the adjectives like phenomenal, stunning, and emotional. In “The Social Network” Eisenburg delivers a character as real as you and I, he is no Disney prince, nor an action hero, he is an awkward teenager whose insecurities and fears control his already dismal social skills. Zuckerburg is clearly a genius but as far as he depicted in the movie he is not the best of communicators and seems to exist a world of his own, ruled by selfish motives and an eternal quest for significance. Meanwhile Andrew Garfield’s character, Eduardo Saverin, is a somewhat more one-dimensional character but laudable nonetheless. Garfield plays the role well, his character is more practical than Zuckerburgs, but his talents as actor shine through despite his role’s limited flexibility.  Eduardo Saverin is a likable person whose innocence and natural trust of Zuckerburg makes him nearly impossible to hate. He seeks only to do well but perhaps it is this naive quality that holds Facebook back and ultimately leads to his demise as an executive. The final character-actor I wish to discuss is Justin Timberlake’s character, Sean Parker, a greedy big shot that made his name for pioneering Napster and getting into high profile law suites. It is natural to hate Sean Parker, he is a cocky incarnation of greed, and one truly sees his evil when he plays Zuckerburg off of Saverin causing an emotional exchange between the two as the movie draws to a close.  Timberlake’s role was hyped up to be Oscar worthy but I don’t find this to be the case, his performance is sufficient in that he plays the role well but unfortunately his character is incredibly one dimensional in that he possesses only an evil connotation. In sum expect to see Eisenberg giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars, Garfield will more than likely get a nomination, while Timberlake will receive praise for his role but the best he can hope for is a Golden Globe.

Setting: Harvard and Silicon Valley, the two main settings for this film hit home with the current trend in movies targeted at young adults.  The setting of “The Social Network” is enough to make any college student drool with jealousy. What could be better than combining the academic prestige of the nations best Ivy League school along with the central hub of new and emerging technologies? Most stories would struggle to balance these settings, or even to incorporate them into the plot but luckily for Fischner these settings played a legitimate role in the actual creation of Facebook, and thusly these locations flow naturally with the script.

Themes: Friendship vs. Greed, Social Elitism, the desire for greatness among the brilliant.

Rating: 4.5/5

Written by: Yours Truly.....

Jake's Article on Facebook by Jake Skinner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Birkenstocks and Beer: What It Means to Fit a Facebook Stereotype.

Greetings Everyone,

After last weeks article on Identity Crisis in the realm of Facebook I thought it would make an interesting article to dissect the different types of broad personalities on “The Social Network”. It is important to understand that these stereotypes do not encompass all Facebook users nor even the majority users, rather these stereotypes cover a small minority that we have all come to know. So here they are!

The Facebook Hipsters: Everybody knows at least one, and your news feed knows them very well. These are the kids that post pictures of themselves at certain locations such as concerts, coffee shops, parties, and bookstores. Perhaps these photos are in black and white; maybe he or she prefers sepia, either way this person will be wearing their favorite v-neck shirt and Birkenstocks. Facebook-Hipsters like ironic statuses, usually a quote from obscure poet or philosopher, if you can recognize the author of this quote then you steal all the joy from a Hipster’s soul. Give a Facebook-hipster a Nikon camera and you will in-turn receive an innumerable amount of wide-angle shots featuring subjects in abstracted poses.

The Facebook Yuppies: The Facebook Yuppies feel as though their civic duty is to chronicle every action they partake in during the day with both statuses and photos. An example of a Yuppie status would be “Sarah is drinking her diet coke from Coates,  totes yum! :]”. Yuppies state facts on Facebook that no one in their right minds would ever care about and post pictures of inconsequential events. Facebook Yuppies are attention seekers and would be likely to ask why you didn’t respond to their comment on your status.

Facebook Thespians:  Facebook Thespians are the theatre students of Facebook. These kids post overly dramatic statuses in order to draw attention to themselves and their condition. For example “ Peter is : wondering when the dark clouds of anguish will release his soul from eternal bondage”. Thespians post their statuses to make specific statements about certain topics without actually saying anything about that topic. .Rather than face human interaction about these issues Thespians post their thoughts or feelings online, which allows them to hide from the requirement of social skills.

Facebook Bros and Teases- These characters are relatively simple Facebook users, their Facebook exists for one reason, to validate their social status. Facebook Bro’s and Teases like to post pictures of themselves in suggestive poses, a Facebook Tease would post a picture of herself in skimpy clothing, where a Facebook Bro would post a picture of himself flexing in the mirror. The status of these stereotypes would be something similar to “ John is: going to the Gamma party, going to get drunnkkkkk!!”. The focus of a Bro or Tease is to show everyone that they are in with the in-crowd, and that their life isn’t boring but rather is more like a some teenage-movie. These sort of people feed off the party life, they consign themselves to idiotic sayings made by rappers and would most likely fail to locate Kenya on a map.

Honorable Mention: Facebook Sportscaster, Facebook Gamer, Facebook Politician

So here we have four main stereotypes, I am sure that there are more and you should expect that I will investigate these at a later date. The next post will be a movie review on the recently released motion picture “The Social Network”

Jake Sleeping by Jake Skinner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Identity Crisis

Hello World,

Facebook is a site of images, everywhere you click there’s an image. The home page takes you to a news feed, full of images. Click on your best friends profile and you’ll find even more images, click on your own photo album and instantly all 567 photos of you pop up ready to be viewed by anyone who has time to kill or who is stalking you, or perhaps both. Now being the investigative journalist that I am, I did a little research on the history of Facebook and I found that Facebook’ s predecessor, “Facemash” was originally created at Harvard and its’ purpose served to link a student profile with a student picture, which was not legal at the time at Harvard. To find out that Facebook was created in a college dorm was information that both fascinated and frightened me. Much like everyone else I had always assumed that Facebook had always existed like God or cheese and  even if I did accept the fact that Facebook is not greater than time I figured it spawned from a black hole or was created in some great galactic collision. Anyways skip foreword a couple of years,  and “Facemash” became “Facebook”, and “Facebook” became a site littered with its users photographs, dominating internet traffic.

So now you must be asking yourself “what is the point of his ramblings?” My point is this: does a profile picture or photo album accurately reflect its user? Does a site committed to representing its users accurately really accomplish this mission? Simply put no. In my research I tried to examine my friends Facebook accounts, more specifically their photos, in order to determine whether or not these sites truly encapsulated their personality. My research lead me to the conclusion that Facebook is essentially one massive façade of social imagery. This occurs when people are not accurately represented by their Facebook because they control what is posted on there site thusly anyone can essentially form their own image to be who ever they want to be. If I wanted to be a beer chugging frat boy I could, all I would have to do is post the appropriate pictures and statuses to fit that image, and just like that I am the newest member of Animal House. Any person is capable of crafting any image on Facebook they so desire; thusly no image on Facebook can be taken as a legitimate representation. In this light every picture on Facebook means something, every picture that goes on Facebook must be examined in the context of what image it is trying to be created, what is this picture saying about a person? In sum Facebook has now gone from a website that distracted me from my schoolwork to the catalyst for my examination of self-image. Who knew Facebook could give me this much of a headache?

Mission Satement Impossible

Its 3:00 am on a Wednesday night and I haven’t started my essay on the political state of the European Union. The paper will make up thirty percent of my semester grade. I guess “whoops” doesn’t really cover this one does it? But wait! There’s good news! I have two thousand friends on Facebook and the girl from the last week’s party friended me, score.

          
 How many times have you been in this very scenario? You're suppose to be doing something of pressing importance, perhaps a term paper, or maybe the eight weeks of math homework you didn’t do because the new Call of Duty game came out but instead of actually doing that important task, you found yourself on Facebook liking the status of a friend. How many times have you found yourself looking at the fantastic parties and events your friends are attending while you sit there and stare at the computer screen and think “If only I was that awesome…”. Facebook is smoke and mirrors my friends. Yes, I said it and George Orwell would be proud. Facebook is evil and there is no doubt about it, it killed Myspace and now it wants our GPA, but I say no!

           
“But Jake” you say, “How do you plan to defeat the evils of Facebook?” and my answer is this, I do not plan to eliminate Facebook from my life but rather I plan to research and dissect it. Over the next month, I intended to chronicle and analyze both my and my friend’s usage of Facebook, blogging the stories and the results of my research. I do not know what will come of this quest to truly find out what Facebook is and how it works, but I hope that by viewing Facebook in a objective manner I can some how obtain a better understanding of how its dark magic works and perhaps even neutralize its powers. In a sense I am a modern day Tom Wolfe, but instead of studying hippies and drugs, I’m studying a social networking site that eats people lives. So let it be known; Facebook I’m coming for you.

Check out the cast of the upcoming Facebook Movie.