Facebook and the Distorted Truth

Milosz Paul Rosinski 1

Facebook and the Distorted Truth


Table of Contents Introduction 3 I. Introducing Facebook 4

II. Facebook as a Mimetic Representation 5

2.1 The Good Old Days of Virtuality 5

2.2 The Flexibility of Truth 6

III. The Epistemic Mode and Problems 6 3.1 All the Virtual Wall’s a Stage 7 3.2 Aristotle wrote “Mimesis rocks!” on his wall. 8 3.3 Facebook as Panopticon 8 3.4 Facebook as Disneyland 10 IV. Plato’s guidance for the use of facebook 12

4.1 Plato commented “Mimesis sucks” on Aristotle’s Status. 12 Conclusion 14 References 15 Appendix 16


Introduction “I rather make a life than make a living”

A Facebook user’s status message

from Zhao et al. (2008), p.1828

Facebook.com creates the opportunity of a representation of your self. The platform

represents ‘faces’ in an internet-based network or ‘book’, publishing an own virtual reality. A

personal representation is a 'profile', containing visual and verbal media. 300 million people

up to now created their own profiles and ‘context’ or network1. These interactions are not

merely kept online, the virtual and real interact.

The unity and differentiation between reality and appearance is discussed since Plato and

Aristotle. As facebook users create an appearance based on a desired real life representation,

the ancient discussion is still relevant today. Facebook as a commercial company is interested

in making people dependent to maximize time spent online2. With both rapidly increasing

users and time spent in the virtual world3 the individuals’ dependency grows. Why do people

consume this virtual world? People use facebook to ‘get to know about people’ (Pempek et

al., 2009). Thus, one could say for epistemological reasons. This brings Plato and Aristotle

back in the discourse. The ancient philosophers have opposing ideas about epistemology,

based on different notions of reality and appearance. The attempt is made to converge Plato’s

and Aristotle’s concepts with the contemporary phenomenon of facebook.

This essay proposes that the use of facebook can be categorized into two types. The first

category is the method of mimetic representation. The second category is facebook as a

device to induce knowledge from appearances, in the following labeled epistemic mode. This

approach is used to expand the academic discussion based on Kelley (2007) and Zhao et al.

(2008) further beyond facebook as an identity building and communication device. As

introduced above, reality and appearance encompass and interact with each other on

facebook. Plato argues that problems arise when reality and appearance encompass. This is

relevant when using facebook in its epistemic mode. The problem is that the virtual

representations are mimetical representations of reality. Thus, according to Plato the epistemic

use is problematic. Yet, it is one of the main uses of facebook. This essay argues that

facebook deludes perceptions of people’s reality. 1 http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics 2 Revenues are mainly collected through advertisements displayed online, increasing with page impressions. 3 Op. cit. 1


The following approach is chosen to evaluate this argument. Firstly, facebook is briefly

introduced in general. Secondly, the method of mimetic representation is described. Thirdly,

the specific epistemic mode and its problems to use facebook are presented. Fourthly, a

normative evaluation of the epistemic mode follows based on Plato’s The Republic. Lastly, a

conclusion and further research suggestions are proposed.

I Introducing Facebook

Before elaborating on the epistemic mode of facebook, in this section a brief introduction to

facebook follows. Please note the appendix (pp 16) for Figure 1 up to Figure 3 visualizing

facebook.

Facebook is a commercial enterprise offering an online world of personal representations. The

company was founded in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore student.1 Up to now the service is

free of charge and is financed through customized advertisements. After Google it is the

webpage with the second highest amount of page impressions1. The innovation that

popularized facebook rapidly to more than 300 million users is its’ service to create an online

representational network. One indicator of the significance of facebook is that more than 70%

of the users spend between 10 and 60 minutes daily on the platform (Ross et al, 2009). In

comparison to email or instant messaging, facebook does not limit to online person-to-person

communication. The core of facebook is the profile containing various media mimetically

representing a person. It is the function quantitatively most often used (Pempek et al., 2009).

The most important profile features are the profile picture and the wall, which are often

referred to in this essay. Therefore a short description of the two representational devices

follows.

The profile picture is the standard avatar of each user or the visual representation. The wall is

an online bulletin board that each user has. The wall posts are essentially public and address

all facebook friends as an audience. Its’ content is created both by the represented person and

by spectators. The wall illustrates the two possibilities of using facebook as a performer and a

spectator. In the following it is introduced how and why people represent themselves online. 1 Ibid.


Officially facebook’s service is to “keep up with friends, upload pictures, and to learn about

people”.2 This essay therefore introduces mimetic representation and epistemic mode as the

two major modes of use, based on the above mentioned official definition and recent research

as for example Zhao et al. (2008). First, general mimetic characteristics are introduced (II)

which are further exemplified in their specific epistemic mode (III).

II. Facebook as a Mimetic Representation

This section explains how facebook can be seen as a mimetic representation. People present

themselves in two ways as a Me and the Social Self (Zhao et al., 2008). These representational

categories are not mutually exclusive, but overlapping. Based on Me and Social Self, Zhao et

al suggest that people use facebook to “get to know about people”. This implies that people

represent each other online and infer from these representations about the real persons.

Pempek et al (2009) furthermore denote that it is not only inducing of knowledge, but people

want to get to know people better. The fact that users get to know each other better means the

online environment creates opportunities which were hitherto unexplored offline. This

observation can be explained with two approaches. Firstly, people could see in Plato’s words

eternal forms in the facebook environment. Secondly, another approach is to regard it from a

social constructivist point of view that people represent themselves in the way others see

them. Both approaches lead to methodological problems concerning the epistemic mode of

facebook which are partly due to the portals’ environment.

There are two specific characteristics of the environment considering the mimetic

representations of persons. Firstly, the facebook is in-between real and virtual. Secondly, the

truth is flexible on facebook.

2.1 The Good Old Days of Virtuality

Facebook is not a virtual representation, it is in-between real and virtual. It is common to

speak about “real persons” and “virtual avatars”, but one essential characteristic of facebook

is its in-between status. Even though the virtual users are only representations, their online

actions have consequences in the offline world (Pempek et al., 2009). The interaction of

reality and virtuality can be exemplified with the gifts people can buy online for real offline 2 Ibid.


money and give these “material” gifts to other facebook users. These gifts are only online

appearances without any equivalent offline. Another point is that whatever people do on

facebook holds consequences in the offline world. It is even more evident vice versa, as most

of the things represented online are “material” and “themes” from offline. So although,

intuitively the concept of offline and online exist, it seems outdated to apply this notion when

equating it with real and virtual to facebook. The virtual and real do not only interact with

each other, they are encompassed.

2.2 The Flexibility of Truth

The truth is elusive on facebook. The representations are not the identities established in the

real world, rather they are hoped-for-possible selves (Zhao et al, 2008). This is the case as

facebook is used as a device for how one would like to appear. The possibility of editing

one’s identity is easier in the online environment. One can play with offline conventions and

show in-group characteristics that are more easily demonstrated online than offline. Because

of its technical possibilities, the platform can be used to create an idealized or romanticized

portrayal of one’s identity. This tendency is further discussed in 3.3. In general users project a

self that is socially desirable, in order to increase social capital gained in the environment, as

Ellison (2007) proposes. Subject to the environment, users represent themselves to better

situate within the given social milieu. As Zhao (2008) puts it, both Me and Social Self (cf. II)

can be presented well on pictures. In fact most of the pictures uploaded on facebook show

people together with others. The person is contextualized through portrayal with their social

peer group. This is an example of setup in the social context rather than as individual. This

makes it difficult to perceive characteristics of individual and not group members.This is

mostly achieved with the attribute of “show don’t preach” in the Flaubertian sense of trying

to present the things “as they are”, appearing objectively “true”. It seems legitimized, to

therefore stretch the truth a bit, to make a well-rounded appearance, being better and

essentially cooler than the real. These above mentioned general characteristics lead to specific

epistemological problems.

III. The Epistemic Mode and Problems

Based on the above mentioned general mimetic characteristics the epistemic mode is

introduced and with that specific epistemological problems. Users do not see facebook as a


virtual fictional and artistic representation, but as a interaction of reality and a virtual world

(cf.2.1) . Additionally, the representations are not copies of offline identities, but mimetic

represenations created to appeal socially (cf.2.2). In the following section the epistemic mode

of facebook is evaluated (3.1) and the problems illustrated that lead to a deluded perception of

a person based on epistemic use of facebook. Plato’s guidelines of facebook use follow

afterwards in IV.

There are four epistemological problems exemplified in this section: The facebook wall as a

performative stage, the mimetic enjoyment of wall poetry, facebook as a Panopticon and

lastly facebook as Disneyland.

3.1 All the Virtual Wall’s a Stage

The facebook wall as introduced in (I) is the main device used on the platform.

Shall I compare Thy to a Facebook Wall?

Wall posts and status messages can be seen as poetic. 'A form of art which imitates life

through words’ is the common definition of poetry of Aristotle (Andersen, & Haarberg,

2001). Thus, based on Aristotle’s definition the status messages are poetic. The facebook

statuses are used as an expression of feelings and ideas, as for instance Kelley (2007)

identified. When typing a message into the status field “What’s on your mind?” appears in

the text field. This can be seen as an appeal for expression. “What’s on your mind?” does not

mean to reveal the truth about yourself. The idea is to entertain others with interesting poetic

expressions, compared to for example Twitter1 where people are encouraged to answer What

are you doing? to virtually synchronize news and real occurrences. Zhao et al. (2008)

identified two particular themes that people express. Facebook statuses are mostly reflections

on life or expressing a positive attitude about life. People share particular insights about their

life, with a reflective attitude. Most of these statements are revealing minimal information and

have a wouldn’t you like to know? attitude (Zhao et al., 2008). Secondly, people tend to

express positive emotions online. For instance, there is a norm to stage romantic relationships

online by writing poetic messages to each other (Pemplek et al., 2009). This shows the

1 Twitter.com is a blogging service for sending and reading tweets (SMS like messages up to 140 characters). The service became publicly renowned after protestors twittered from Iran during the 2009 post-election demonstrations because of the rigorous censorship of conventional communication.


dramatization of reality with the use of poetry. In general people rather stage entertainment

than revealing truth about them.

3.2 Aristotle wrote “Mimesis rocks!” on his wall.

People enjoy the mimetic pleasure facebook provides. People put twice as much posts on

walls as private messages (Zhao et al., 2008). People seem to prefer to use the online post-its

to perform with each other. As the posts are mostly poetic (cf. 3.1) the “mimetic pleasure” is

indeed wallowed. Every human being enjoys imitations according to Aristotle’s Poetics and

poetry can provide moral insights. Also emotions are educated and purified with katharsis.

The imitations online can represent reality in their own way and not as a realistic copy.

Aristotle claims human actions can be imitated through art, as for instance through drama. As

described in 3.1 human actions are put into dramatic categories of tragedy and comedy, as

illustrated with the staging of romantic relationships. This implies that people use facebook as

a means to stage entertaining performances.

Indeed, faceboom is used as a performance for an audience. Pempek et al (2009) show more

than 40% of the facebook users are interested in presenting for an audience. People stage

representations to an inflated amount of spectators compared to offline possibilities, as for

instance friends of friends (i.e. unknown people) have access to the performances. However,

the fact that unknown people have access to information offline kept private raises problems.

3.3 Facebook as Panopticon

The perception of people changes with the installation of facebook in a way of an inflated

amount of information. The epistemological problems that come up with this can be

categorized into voyeurism, transparency and surveillance.

Voyeurism

“Facebook is extremely voyeuristic – there's something great, and at the same time, creepy, about knowing when someone you haven't talked to in 5 years broke up with their boyfriend who you never even met.”

A facebook user in Pempek et al (2009), p. 235 Not only do people enjoy mimetic representations, there seems to be a desire to get to know

as much “vulgar” information as possible out of the platform. People can spend time lurking


for information without the offline normative cost of being nabbed. This increased

accessibility of information combined with a decreased cost of access leads to facebook being

an interesting platform for searching for information about people – on the basis that it is

provided.

Transparency

The degree of transparency and self-disclosure is high on facebook (Kelley, 2007). Having a

“worth noticing” profile is positively correlated with the degree of disclosure of privacy. The

burden of embarrassment is arguably lower in the online environment compared to an offline

person-to-person disclosure. So, more disclosure is online necessary to be interesting for

online spectators. Also the distinctive features of the environment facilitate transparency. The

basic setting on facebook is to disclose information to all facebook friends. This is congruent

to the commercial interest of maximization of time spent online to proportionally increase

advertisement revenues. Expressions or information about people interacting are recorded and

can openly be accessed ex post among friends. Actually people can restrict accessibility to

information, but this decreases the entertaining or voyeuristic value for the audience and is

therefore seldom executed (Kelley, 2007). However, this makes information for people

available that possibly would not be present in an offline setup. Therefore, people’s

perception is influenced by the virtual representation in a disproportionate way compared to

the real world. This leads to the problem that people due to online information actually know

more about a person than without facebook.

Surveillance Facebook seems to be a world of perfect surveillance. Due to the setup of the facebook

platform a high degree of keeping facebook friends under surveillance is possible. The

systematic documentation and recording of all information personally incorporated in the

platform can be publicly disclosed as a facebook friend of the person. Before the technical

innovation arguably this degree of surveillance compared to a Panopticon would be every

secret service’s dream. Additionally everything that is incorporated in the platform is property

of facebook as a company, based on the General Terms and Conditions Act. Proceeding from

the assumption that most users habitually do not think about this, they are unaware of their

factual donation of copyright. Another point showing that users are well aware of the

surveillance possibilities of facebook is the transformation of the online representation due to


audience changes. As Kelley (2007) points out, users change their profiles according to

audience conventions. An illustrating example is graduation as a “rite of passage” from

university in the sense of entrance of the working life. Graduation seems to include the

cleanup of facebook photos portraying blushless behavior, which is considered inappropriate

in the new audience. This shows the representative character of the network as student users

perceive employers to be under surveillance. Although people can restrict access to

information, they refuse to do so. Perhaps they want to entertain themselves and take the risk

of being nabbed.

3.4 Facebook as Disneyland

This part of the epistemological problems concerning the use of facebook shows the

idealization or romanticization of information of facebook. People as already introduced in

2.2 produce socially desirable representations. The epistemological problems concerning this

are enforcing consumerism, creativity, denial of academic identity and affirmation.

Enforcing Consumerism

Facebook profiles project a superficial hedonist image of people. As both Kelley (2007) and

Zhao et al. (2008) noted, the information on facebook profiles is portraying a particular

hedonist lifestyle. For instance themes as leisure activities and consumption experiences are

used to “show” the social belongingness to a particular group. Most Facebook users provide

enumerative lists of preferences signaling precise material tastes (Zhao et al., 2008). It is in

the commercial interest of facebook to strengthen an identity of persons based on materialism,

as advertisements displayed online work with an algorithm that tries to suit material interests

of people and proposes direct additional shopping opportunities. Additionally people are

proposed music and books through advertisements, as this is the information mostly provided

in facebook “About Me” sections.

Everyone’s creative at facebook.

The type of “About Me” information is strongly skewed at “creative” information. As

Pemplek et al. (2009) introduce, more than 60% of the people include favorite music, movies

and books in their personal wall info. It seems that people contextualize themselves with


identification to particular art works. Music is the information the quantitatively most often

used. On average Pemplek et al. denote eight songs per user in their sample. With that

information people can easier identify a specific taste of a person, compared to an offline

setting. It seems music has a particular power of identification and representation of a person.

People perceive each other as an aggregate of songs they listen to. However, it is just

information “told” on the profile and unlike in reality where people have to “show” in a

conversation or a concert that they are really in the particular in-group. So, the creativity is

used to appear cool to a particular group and a “nerd” image is anticipated.

There are no nerds on facebook.

The academic identity is not present in facebook profiles among students (Pempek et al.,

2008). Interestingly, compared to the offline norm students seem not to identify themselves

via the particular classes they are attending. Users have the option of listing classes and using

this as a mimetic device. However, this is counterintuitive against the idealized cool

representation and is therefore seldom used (Zhao et al, 2008). There is a form of avoiding

being perceived as a “nerd” or a person that identifies himself through university. As

exemplified in the paragraphs above with the creative profile info and now with the denial of

an academic identity, people seem to represent a part of their reality that is offline associated

to leisure. This leads to the problem of a de facto misrepresentation of persons, based on their

idealized portrayal. Yet, people infer knowledge about people based on this information.

Affirm or Hush

Another point is that wall posts as a medium of discussion are mostly affirmative. For

example, there was a discussion on Barack Obama’s profile about the Nobel Peace Prize 2009

award. Barack was humbled and 53,545 people like this1. Mostly people congratulated or

clicked on thumbs-up as illustrated in the appendix (p.17). Interestingly, there is no option to

thumbs-down analogously to thumbs-up. This would minimize the pleasure experienced on

the wall and therefore minimize the amount of time spent online, which is intuitively against

the commercial interest. People would not enjoy spending time online to read public criticism.

Based on the environment an affirmative utopia is created. It is not possible to “get to know”

people better just based on their agreement. Yet, the facebook environment intentionally

creates an epistemological gap which users have to be aware of.


IV. Plato’s guidance for the use of facebook

Derived from the mimetic representational problems (II) and the specific epistemic problems

(III) in this section the hypothetical guidance of Plato concerning reality construction of

people in society based on facebook follows.

4.1 Plato commented “Mimesis sucks” on Aristotle’s Status.

There are two epistemological problems that Plato addresses in his Republic that are relevant

in the context of facebook. Firstly, the problem of appearances follows and secondly the

addiction to mimetic representations.

Appearances

According to Plato, users cannot make inferences about persons based on their appearances

but merely based on ideal forms. Facebook relies on appearances (e.g. photographs) and

poetic statuses and therefore cannot be used for the search of how a person is, but only how a

person appears. Also, facebook profiles are a flaw and imperfect copies of reality. People

should not spend time with the imperfect, (Ferrari, 2007). Appearances are tempting and

misleading and it is therefore not possible to infer about persons based on their appearances.

There is no possibility to know if a facebook profile is really representing a person.

Even Plato himself is posthumously represented online. Please note the cover page and

appendix (p.16) for illustrations. Some person capable of imitating Plato on facebook

posthumously revived him as an appearance. The representation survives the physical death of

the original. It is in the power of the person administering the representation of Plato’s

facebook profile to judge its real existence. This example illustrates that the appearances on

facebook can exists without a reality backing them up. This is not a problem if people are

aware of this, but people can be incapable to distinguish between imitations and reality.

Facebook even intensifies the problem of discriminating between reality and appearances.

According to Plato, people have to accept the representations on facebook as a drama and not

1 http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/barackobama?ref=ts


refer to it as real. As facebook encompasses both reality and the virtual appearances (cf. 2.1)

an important skill to develop is the discrimination between these two modes of being. When

not developed well enough, the perception of people represented online influences the real

perception of the people in a deluded way. Plato argues ones’ reason is not in full control of

one’s action and people irrationally pursue the vulgar. Because “the sun always shines on

facebook” (cf. 3.4) it can make addictive, as people enjoy spending time in a better than real

world.

Addiction

Facebook is a simplified and dramatic representation. Firstly, facebook represents life simple

and clear, unlike the real world. People could start to think that reality is as pure and simple as

represented. Also the forms of interaction are simplified. Even though the means of

representation are technically state of the art, in terms of human interaction they are simple.

With the use of wall posts "nuances of voice and intonations are stripped away" as well as

"'no glances or shrugs or iconic smiles" are technically possible (Kelley, 2007, p.18). This can

lead to addiction to the simplified or flat representations compared with the complexities of

real life.

Secondly, facebook makes a drama out of life. Facebook as an endless soap-opera dramatizes

life to comedies and tragedies. People should be characters and not playing dramatic roles,

according to Plato. The pictures and wall posts are aimed to provoke emotions. These

emotions, according to Plato can be vulgar and corrupting the soul. The vulgar corrupts the

soul in the way that people pursue something untrue. The appearances appeal to an inferior

part of the soul unconcerned with truth (Ferrari, 2007). People have appetite for vulgar

pleasures and by satisfying it places the vulgar in their souls (Ferrari, 2007). Kelley (2007)

shows that people perceive spending time on facebook as vulgar. Therefore user have the

tendency to limit time spent or have a bad conscious when having spent “too much” time on

facebook. They perceive facebook as a possibility to escape from problematic and complex

real life and watch the dramatic online world, which always has some entertainment to offer.

Facebook can make people addictive to the dramatic endless performances online.


Conclusion

Facebook is an online platform offering a mimetic device for personal representation. The

general characteristics of the representation are the in-between of real and virtual and the

flexibility of the reality of persons represented. People use facebook mostly for its' use of

getting to know about people, in this essay labeled epistemic mode.

The inferences of truth about people based on their facebook profiles leads to problems.

Verbal facebook representations are poetic and enjoyed for their mimetic pleasure and are not

a realistic representation. Facebook inflates the amount of mostly transparent information

available about people, leading to a high degree of surveillance. Also facebook users idealize

information about themselves to appear creative and try to deny their academic indentity.The

problems Plato brings in the discussion are the problematic inference of truth about people

based on their appearance which is simplified and dramatized. For all the reasons mentioned

above, facebook deludes the perception of people’s reality.

Plato provides some guidance for the use of facebook. People should not make inferences

based on the online appearances and accept it as simplified drama. Besides that people should

be aware of the dangers of addiction that facebook provides. This paper limited to the very

basic evaluation of facebook hallucinating people's perception about each other. Further

research could continue to focus on the motivations of people using the platform. Also the

concept of seeing facebook as part of the reality compared to a substitute could abolish the

epistemological “tumbling stone” of the virtual and real distinction prevailing so far.


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Ferrari, G.R.F.(Eds).(2007). The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press Introna, L. (2005). Phenomenological Approaches to Ethics and Information Technology. The

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 12, 2009 from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-it-phenomenology/

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Appendix

Figure 1.A typical facebook profile, in this case Plato.

Figure 2. A News Feed.


Figure 3.Barack Obama’s facebook statement to the Nobel Peace Prize 2009. Retrieved from: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/posted.php?id =6815841748&share_id=154954250775&comments=1#s154954250775

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