veracity there is to the portrayal of Zuc-
kerberg by the film's writer, Aaron Sor-
iie of the most intoxicating
things about Facebook is .
tbepossibilityitrepresents
fcr reinvention. From our
words, toourimage,toour
friends, Facebook lets us control the
public perceptionofourselveswith an
iron-fist that would surelyplease.even
KimJong-il.
For Facebook's half a billion users,
embracing the social media behemoth
has given them the opportunity to
fashion wittier, prettier,.smarter,sexier
and more popular versions of them-
selves, largelyfor the benefit of old
school friends, former partners and
distant cousins who would have trouble
picking them out in acrowdedroom.
It's interesting to note just how fast we
have become schooledinto developing
Brand Me forthebenefit of our social
media lives.
Essentially, we have taken the
commercial marketing model and
turned it on ourselves, producing a
comrnodified version of our lives to
retail on Facebook.Identityhasbecome
fluid in the digital slipstream, a
constantlyrestitched and reworked .
composite that we can perpetually
adapt with the click of a mouse.
The comingrelease of TheSocial
Network;;:the film about the birth of
Facebook and its creation by the then
Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, has
given rise to a certain amountofreflec-
tion about how his site has altered our
sociaifabric.
Facebook has been accused of
twisting thewaywe interact with our
nearest and not-so-dearest. Countless
reactionary diatribes have bemoaned
the. paucity and the cheap-knock-off sort culturally compelled to offer up our lives
of friendship it allegedly offers us. But
what Zuckerberg'screationhasdoneJs
unwittingly reveal the seam of inset-
urity and neediness that ripples beneath
the surface. Each time we post,
comment or share something, we are
feeding an inner needtobe watched,
liked and wanted by others.
We maybe decades out of school, but
we still crave the same schoolyard
popularity as a bunch of kindergarten
children.
Facebook gives us a fleeting feeling of wake up.
connection. It's a digital inoculation
against any creeping sense of disconaddicts. Australia ranks second in the
nection or isolation. Log in, and time
and time again, you will instantly find -
yourself posited back at the centre of a
social universe, giving us a false sense of Twitter.
buffering from a lonely world. The
power of social media speaks to an
underlying need to feel"like we are the
centre of things.
Among the countless column inches
devoted to the question ofhowmuch
kin, there is an irony that a socially
disconnected boy created something
that gives the entire world an instant hit
of faux-popularity and companionship.
Reflecting on Zuckerberg's character
in an interview with The Daily Beast,
Sorkin said: "I identify with somebody
wanting to:build an entire world where
they get to reinvent themselves. Where
they can soda se nsolitude. Where
they can do a rewrite and a polish on
their own personality."
For Sorkin, also the writer and creator
of The West Wing, Facebook users are
"acting and performing"for an"audi-
ence"•
When we think about the ironic status
updates orpost-holidaysnapswe
consciously choose -lookhowthin Iam!
Look at.the exotic beach I visited! -we
are deliberately making a point about
who we are, what values we hold and
what is the substance of our lives:,,
Social networking sites entice us to
create a personal narrative for the
benefit ofothers and there is no masking
ourunderlying awareness of our online
visibility.
Or, as a recent paper from University
of California researchers. put it, when we
use social networking sites we become
"hyper-focused on... constructing
hyper-elaboratedidentities".
But the consequence of our growing
seduction byFacebook is that we are
becoming increasingly socially and
We fear being out of the
loop, of falling out of step
with our d igi tal clique ...
We are a nation of social
media addicts.
and ourselves for others. We nowlive
more distracted lives because we're
checking, updating and commenting in
a state oflow-level anxiety. We fear being
out of the loop, of falling out of step with
our digital clique.
Arecent survey found that 56 percent
ofFacebookusers saythey "need"to ;
check their account at least once a day;
48 per cent of us even check Facebook
and Twitter from bed on a daily basis,
either during the night or as soon as we
We are a nation of social media
world, beating the US and Britain, when
it comes to how much time on average
we spend on sites like Facebook and
Somehow, all of the world wide web
has become a stage and we are the
players-you and me and 500 million
other potential friends.
Daniela Elser is a freelance journalist.