Essay

HAS TECHNOLOGY CHANGED THE TERM ‘FRIEND’?

Yesterday, I caught up with a few friends. Natasha showed off her latest pictures from her European adventures. Sophie introduced me to her newborn son. Then Zane played his bands’ latest song – twice. All this happened in one day and none of us ever left our computers. We were on MySpace and we weren’t alone. For those of you who live under a rock, MySpace is a social networking service that allows members to create unique personal profiles online in order to build networks of ‘friends’. I have 124 MySpace ‘friends’ and there is a 90/10 split between people I know and bands I love. That’s right. MySpace has let me be friends with my favourite musicians. The term ‘friend’ has taken on a whole new meaning in the world of MySpace.

Steven Pearman, the senior vice president for production strategy at MySpace was quoted by News Week online (2008, p. 1) stating that “at MySpace the term ‘friend’ goes beyond people I know in the world”. This evokes a lot of questions about the nature of ‘friendship’ when it comes to sites like MySpace. How many friends is too many? How does someone become an online friend? What other mediums have influenced this change to the nature of friendship? Furthermore how has this change impacted society? The following study will analyse and explore these issues with references to a variety of sources and evidence from the Tila Tequila case study.

So how many friends is too many? According to author Ethan Watters (2004), you can never have too many friends. That’s indisputable in some sense, but over one million friends? That’s Questionable. An article published by Time Magazine Online features Tila Tequila who has over 1.7 million MySpace ‘friends’. Who is Tila Tequila? She’s the poorly dressed want to be rapper who has been touted the Queen of MySpace. She’s turned her MySpace presence into a career, and Time Magazine Online credits Tila Tequila for what has become the world’s biggest popularity contest. Pre-Tila, your MySpace friends were mostly people you actually knew. Post-Tila, the biggest game on the site became who has the most friends, who ever they might be.

In view of that, does having an excessive amount of MySpace ‘friends’ categorise a person as popular? Not exactly, Tila Tequila is trying to launch a music career – yet despite having over 1.7 million MySpace ‘friends’, according to Time Magazine Online, only 13,000 of them –less than 1% - actually bought her first single. Also just recently, 2008 Big Brother housemate Michael was evicted from the house, yet according to the official Big Brother website he has over 10,000 MySpace ‘friends’. These extreme examples display how a MySpace ‘friend’ can in fact, not be a friend at all.

Therefore how does someone become an online friend? According to Terry Burrows (2007), an online friend can be someone you have not even met. Burrows (2001, p. 176) states how “social networking on the Internet enables people to make new and relevant contacts with those they would have been unlikely to have otherwise met”. Not only can a ‘friend’ on your MySpace list be someone you haven’t met, but someone you see all the time and don’t say a single word to. Jasmin Kelaita, a writer for the Camden Advertiser shares her experience with an Internet ‘friend’ in an article she recently published online. She explains how she once had a MySpace friend that would see at her the gym and never say hello to her face, but would leave her ‘I saw you’ comments on her MySpace page. This demonstrates how ‘friends’ can seem so close in the confines of MySpace, yet so far away when it comes to physical communication.

Social networking sites such as MySpace are not exclusively responsible for altering the nature of the term ‘friend’. Other aspects such as the media and television have also influenced this change. I think a lot has to do with the rise of reality television over the past decade and how accessible and familiar celebrities are to us now. Renowned authors and sociologists O’Shaughnessy and Staddler (2005) support this in highlighting how the media encourages a feeling of friendship with stars and celebrities by referring to them only by first name. Reality TV shows like Big Brother have everyday people living in a fishbowl like environment for up to three months for all to see. For a few months of the year, the contestants are among the most well known people in Australia and viewers feel like they get to know the housemates. According to Watters (2004) it is the feeling of ‘knowing’ a lot about someone which makes people believe they are ‘friends’.

From the information we have established that new technologies have reshaped the nature of ‘friendship’. So are these changes having a positive or negative impact on society? According to White and Wyn (2008) digital communication has generated a greater sense of belonging for the individual, especially youth. This sense of belonging has a positive impact as sites such as MySpace provide a space for people to feel apart of a particular group or subculture. Also Nancy Willard states that social networks “allow people to experiment with their own identities” (2007, p.76). She also adds that “they offer a place for people to make connections which are contributing to their social well-being and expanding their perspectives and understanding of themselves, their close friends and other people from around the world” (2007, p.74). Through these statements it is apparent that new digital communication technologies are a positive influence to the development of the individual and society.

Through the analysis of MySpace and Tila Tequila it is evident that in recent times the term ‘friend’ has evolved. Today a friend doesn’t have to be someone who has actually sat on your living room sofa; in fact it can be your favourite band, a celebrity or simply someone who is a friend of a friend. Ideally this expansion of the term friend has given people a greater sense of belonging. Although the amount of online friends a person has doesn’t necessarily reflect their popularity. Subsequently it is up to the individual if they want complete strangers listed as ‘friends’ on their MySpace page. As for me, I think I will stick with the 90/10 split of people I know and the bands I love.

Alyce Elliott
S2638654

Reference List:

Websites:

TMZ.com In The Zone: ‘Tila Tequila's 1.7 Million "Friends" Not Giving Single a Shot’, viewed May 8th, 2008, http://www.tmz.com/2007/03/16/tila-tequilas-1-7-million-friends-not-giving-single-a-shot/

Big Brother.com: ‘Housemate Profiles’, viewed May 15th, 2008,
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:m6uBoHpJoNkJ:www.bigbrother.com.au/housemate-profile-michael.htm+big+brother+myspace+friends&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=au

News Week.com: How many MySpace friends is too many? Viewed May 15th 2008, http://www.newsweek.com/id/137512?from=rss

MySpace.Com: Terms & Conditions, viewed May 8, 2008
http://www.myspace.com/Modules/Common/Pages/TermsConditions.aspx

Camden – Your Guide.com: I have 500 MySpace friends, viewed May 15th, 2008, http://camden.yourguide.com.au/blogs/jaz-says/i-have-500-myspace-friends-therefore-i-am/770377.aspx


Books:

Watters, Ethan 2004, Urban Tribes: Are friends the new family, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.

O’Shaughnessy, M and Stadler, J 2005, Media and Society: An Introduction (Third Edition), Oxford University Press, New York.

Burrows, Terry 2007, Your Life Online: Making the most of Web 2.0 – the next generation of the internet, Carlton Books Limited, London.

White, Rob & Wyn, Johanna 2008, Youth & Society: Exploring the Social Dynamics of Youth Experience, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne.

Willard, Nancy 2007, Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber Savvy Teens, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.