What Friendship Means - Essay Example

A liquid life and social networking transform what friendship means A liquid life and social networking transform what friendship means Zymunt Bauman, Anthony Giddens and Ervin Goffman are gathered at Zymunt Bauman’s home for tea. The three friends often visit each other and their conversations steer towards different issues that the modern world faces today. On this particular day, the three gentlemen are embroiled in a debate about different social issues. While discussing the transport conditions, their conversation digresses from the main topic when Bauman gets a new notification in his email inbox from the famous social networking site Facebook. The notification is an invitation from one of Bauman’s friends to be a member of the site. The conversation progresses as they debate about the attitudes rampant in the society regarding social networking sites. Bauman: I often get invitations in my email inbox to join different sites. I am tired of all these mails that are nothing more than junk for me. I wonder why there is such a craze amongst the youth. Goffman: The craze is not just limited to the youth. Adults are equally involved in the promulgation of this trend. Most of my colleagues at my office are often using these sites during their free time. In fact, I have seen some of them so obsessed with them that they keep them opened in the Internet browser even when they are working on office assignments. Giddens: Yes, true but what amazes me the most is their surprise when they find out that I am not a member of any social networking site. I have often found myself in heated conversations with them and to be honest comrades, this has given me some interesting insights into their perceptions about social interaction. I am incredulous at the explanations that they have to offer in defense of these sites and how they help them socialize. Bauman: I have encountered the same attitude at my workplace as well. Social networking sites are considered to be the holy grail of cyber socialization. My colleagues who do not know me well often misjudge me for being unsocial and conservative for not having a profile on these sites. Friends, this came as a surprise to me when I first heard this view but people regard these sites to be a very good way of fostering friendships with acquaintances and getting to know other people well. This has led me to believe that social networking sites have completely transformed the way people perceive friendship. Goffman: This makes me wonder what are the reasons and social factors that are causing people to behave like this. Bauman: In my view, it is the concept of liquid life and liquid modernity that is the underlying cause of such an attitude shift. Liquid life and liquid modernity are intricately tied to each other. Liquid life is the life that one has in a liquid modern society. For me, a liquid modern society is one where people do not get time to develop habits. It is characteristic of conditions under which people act but these conditions change rather quickly, giving no time for the actions of the people to develop into habits and routines. For this reason, I adhere to the view that liquid life does not have the ability to maintain its shape or be on the same course for a long period of time. In fact, I have observed that in such societies people cannot engrave their accomplishments into ever-lasting possessions due to the accelerated pace at which conditions are changing. This means that basing future patterns on past events is not a reliable action. As a result, this life becomes one of the most unstable types of lives. The reason for this is that there are many pieces of the jigsaw that are missing, if not all of them; this makes it increasingly difficult to predict what the complete jigsaw would look like. There are many worries that accompany such a life and this is where I find the root cause of the transformation of friendship and social interactions in the modern era. The liquid life is responsible for creating a sequence of new beginnings; but it is the quick nature of the endings that is the reason for the lack of stability in such a kind of life. There is greater emphasis on downshifting when people have not learnt to upshift completely. Therefore life in such a society cannot stay static. In fact the force that drives it is the horror of expiry. People’s lives become nothing more than a race, where each of them is competing to be in the front. This is because of the perception that those who are left in the rear are doomed to be a failure in their lives. People are trying their best to not be relegated to waste and be regarded as rubbish in the fast pace world (Bauman, 2000). The influx of social networking sites has created such a race amongst the individuals. These sites are considered to be trendy and the new social tools. People who do not adapt to these tools are going to demoted to the positions of the destroyed, who have failed to keep up and adapt to the new changes; thus, leading to creative destruction. This is the reason why people are so keen of following this trend. People value the speed of time more rather than the duration. Giddens: I agree with you that modernity has led to the evaporation of time and space. The spatial boundaries that used to define time have more than disappeared. This is a characteristic of modernity, like you, my dear Bauman assert. I feel that post-modernity does not exist. The current trends regarding socialization and friendships have been part of the human psychology earlier too; they are not a novel find. However, they have manifested on a large-scale in a radicalized form. This also supports the view that the current society is not a post-modern era but rather a radicalized version of modernity, presenting its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The perceptions of people about what constitutes social space have changed. With advances in technology, social space is not defined according to the limits that come into existence in the space in which the person traverses. The case is quite the opposite. The advent of virtual space has altered a number of things, especially how social interactions are made. Friendship is no longer the exact same art as was considered a few decades ago. Moreover, like Bauman observed, there is increased instability in the modern world, leading to a precarious life. Giddens: Modernity causes a huge expansion of abstract systems. This transforms the very nature of friendship. In my opinion, one of the consequences of modernity is that friendship becomes a style of reembedding; this relinquishes it from reliance upon personal connections. This means that the antonym of friend, i.e. enemy, no longer exists. Rather it is replaced by an acquaintance, colleague or a person one does not know. Along with this change, there is another change that relates to the replacement of certain emotions. Excuse me from elaborating, but I believe that in today’s world, honor takes the place of loyalty; loyalty is only seconded by personal affection. Furthermore, sincerity takes the place of authenticity, which refers to the notion that the other person be open and a well-wisher. Therefore a friend may not be expected to deliver the truth at all times. Conversely, a friend is someone who safeguards the emotional prosperity of the other person. In the olden times, people used to define a good and sincere friend as someone who is willing to help in the toughest of times. In the modern era, the place of the good friend has been usurped by the honorable cohort (Giddens, 1991). This is one of the reasons why I feel that friendships and social interactions on social networking sites do not represent true sincere commitments. Goffman: I respect your opinion my friend. Friendship indeed has changed. This can also be viewed and interpreted in the context of the presentation of the self. Friendship no longer is about finding a person to trust in and fostering strong ties with the person. Friendship through social networking sites presents a different scenario. Friendship through cyber conversations largely depends on the presentation of the self. I have studied this view extensively and have carried out empirical studies to substantiate my opinion. Social interaction is an inherent ability of human beings; it is this characteristic that gets most of the world’s work done (Burns, 2002). Bearing this in mind, I can say for sure that more work was done in the yore compared to the present times via social interaction. I assert this because social interaction in the old times must have encompassed all methods of in which individuals act towards each other. However, such ways through which people interact with each other have changed greatly over the time due to advances in technology. The advantages of technology are multifarious. People in any corner of the world, no matter how far-flung they are, can communicate with each other through the Internet and telecommunications. All these manners of communication fall under the category of social interaction, which entails all of human activity (Burns, 2002). Socializing on social networking sites is not essentially the same as face-to-face interaction. People judge each other and try to find common characteristics in order to befriend someone. Self cannot be considered as an unwavering substance and is liable to change. The self is basically a consequence of framing of the deeds and performances of the individual. Moreover informal talk is subject to framing to a greater degree than are formal conversations. Informal talk is intrinsically dramatic, with the person giving an account of his or her experiences, interpreting them in a way that furthers a positive image about him or her (Goffman, Lemert & Branaman, 1997). In this way, friendships that are forged on social networking sites are subject to a great degree of framing; social interaction is basically a conglomeration of frames (Manning, 1992). On the other hand, face-to-face conversations are not manipulated so much, making such relationships to be more honest. Bauman: People are caught in a dilemma regarding such sites. I feel it is a mind boggling quandary of expressing one’s individuality and trying to stand out in the crowd that makes people be a part of these sites. People are starting to become obsessed with the notion of being different in the modern liquid world. Facebook becomes the ideal place for the projection of one’s self image. People can become so consumed by projecting themselves that they are unable to concentrate on the consequences of their actions. As I write in one of my books, their actions are “flattened into a perceptual present and filled to the brim with survival-gratification concerns, [the world] leaves no room for worries about anything other than what can be relished and consumed on the spot” (Brewin, 2007). The consequence of such a packed life is that eternity is never achieved. This also significantly points to the nature of friendships that develop in the liquid modern society. Friends let me clarify what type of friendships these sites offer. The person is exposed to an infinite number of people who have the same likes and dislikes as the person has, as well as getting to know one’s long-lost friends and acquaintances as well as people that one liked at the school he or she attended etc. social networking does open many doors for socializing. However these interactions lack loyalty and sincerity. There are forged under the same conditions of liquid modernity that the people live. Therefore people are likely to lose interest in these friendships very soon, when they realize that they are nothing more than 0s and 1s and can never replace personal contact. The interactions start to boil down to the infinity of mundane experiences (Brewin, 2007). Networks between people are not stable; they are made and broken on a regular basis. I feel that their networks are based on instantaneity and disposability (Larsen, Urry & Axhausen, 2006). Giddens: You have raised some interesting points on people’s desire for being unique and to stand out in the group. This is one factor why they want to socialize like this. The concept of friendship has evolved significantly over the years. Did you know that the early Greeks did not even have a word to describe what a friend is. They used to refer to people whom they made conversation with and were close to them as philos; however this term was only used to refer to people who were part of the family or closely related. In languages where a term for friends existed, they were seen as a means for survival. Friends were considered to be in the group, whereas others were out of it. At that time, there was little notion of the survival of the individual, and groups had more chances of survival. The characteristics of a true friend were such that one could always turn for help to them. Therefore friendship was based on the values of being committed to someone and being sincere to him or her. Nowadays, the concept of a friend does not corroborate with this old version of friendship values. As I was talking sometime back, the disembedding mechanisms and the increased time-space distanciation, highlighting Bauman’s view on liquid society, has culminated in changed attitudes (Allan, 2010). Everyone who is referred to as a friend is not part of the group or is expected to offer help in dire situations. Therefore a major change can be observed, from friendship being authenticity based on a mutual process of self-disclosure (Allan, 2010). Goffman: Social interaction and presentation of the self manifests itself significantly in social networking sites. These sites allow the users to enhance one’s reputation and image. People can post that they are reading the books that are famous, post pictures online in which they look good, be members of groups, change their profiles according to what constitutes as acceptable and appropriate social norms, thus pushing their self-image higher and making them appear as more socially acceptable. Users don the role of impression management, presenting a public self for the community. Ties and friendships that are fostered via these sites are not representative of the true character of the people. People exhibit their version of the social me that do not offset face-to-face interaction. The relationships are not founded on a true and sincere footing, since the other person is not what he or she appears to be through his or her profile. However, the presentation of the self and impression management serve to construe the social self which is essential for social interaction, no matter the type of friendship that it results in. For the expression of the complete individual, it is necessary for the individuals to hold each other’s hands in a chain of ceremony. Social interaction and actions that are both public domain and not completely known to the public help to establish our relationships and produce our image and reputation (Tufekci, 2008). People are part of a game where each one tries to project a better social image than the other person. Bauman: I could not agree with you more. The outburst of social networking sites and liquid modernity has made the exposition of self into an art form. People are starting to develop the perception that to gain friends and social status, one has to project a desirable social image on a small profile page on some site (Tanji, 2009). Goffman: Cyber conversations give novel methods to fool people and the Internet will, due to its nature be prejudiced to particular obfuscation (Lindgren, 2007). Giddens: Indeed. Well, thank you my friends for this insightful conversation. I have to leave now. Goffman: Yes. I have to go too. Bauman, thanks for inviting us for tea. Bauman: It was my pleasure. I will walk you to the door. Reference List Allan, K 2010, The Social Lens: An Invitation to Social and Sociological Theory, 2nd ed, Pine Forge Press. Bauman, Z 2000, Liquid modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press. Brewin, K 2007, ‘Face Off’, ThirdWay, Dec, p. 13. Burns, T 2002, Erving Goffman, Routledge. Giddens, A 1991, The consequences of modernity, Stanford University Press. Goffman, E, Lemert, CC & Branaman, A 1997, The Goffman reader, Wiley-Blackwell. Larsen, J, Urry, JU & Axhausen, KW 2006, Mobilities, networks, geographies, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Lindgren, S., 2007. From Flâneur to Web Surfer: Videoblogging, Photo Sharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0., viewed 28 September 2010, . Manning, P 1992, Erving Goffman and modern sociology, Stanford University Press. Tanji, M 2009, Threats in the Age of Obama, Nimble Books LLC. Tufekci, Z 2008, ‘GROOMING, GOSSIP, FACEBOOK AND MYSPACE’, Information, Communication & Society, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 544 – 564. Read More