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So far, Facebook has been discussed as Fasbook, its local mani-
festation in Trinidadian culture. §lithout this injection of cultural
relativism, we could easily be drawn into making vast gener-
alizations about what Facebook is and its social consequences,
based on assumptions about the functions of technology or some
general model of human psychology. \Mith the protective caveat
of cultural relativism, we have reached the point where it should
be safe to engage tentatively with some of the more general con-
sequences of Facebook. These remain tentative since the sources
foi generalization are not yet robust. The main evidence will still
be the research in Trinidad, together with my wider experience of
Facebook as a user with friends in the UK and other countries. In
addition, this is the point of engagement with the burgeoning lit-
erature that is currently emerging about Facebook through various
acadernic books and papers, though I tend to make only very
slight use of iournalism and anecdote since, with a base of four
hunclred million users, almost anything that can happen today will
also happen on Facebook, but an instance is not of itself a sign of
auything consequential. These fifteen theses will commence with
issues of personal relationships, proceed to the idea of Facebook
as comrnunity and conclude by considering other transformations,
such as those of time and space.
How Facebook helps to make relationships
As noted in the portrait of the businessman Burton, the anthropo-
logical starting point in understanding Facebook is to appreciate
thát each and éviry individual was quite literally a social network-
ing site long before Facebook existed. Anthropologists tend to
foóus upon kinship in which we see not individuals but always
personJrehtive to other persons. Even in urban situations such
ás London, perhaps the most common lvay to forge new'relation-
ships has always been via the relationships we already have, -the
friends of friends or relatives. Sometimes this is explicit, as when
you ask your best friend to help you find a date, or whe¡ Burton's
business friends ask him to help them find a new profitable con-
nection. At other times, this is less explicit, just hanging around
with friends of friends. Facebook doesn't invent social networking
but it certainly facilitates and expands it.
Most people feel awkward in the company of people they barely
know, sáffi-conscious about the possible effect of their words and
actions. Facebook provides an attractive buffer in this regard. It
helps us to find out a considerable amount about potential friends,
without requiring any awkward face-to-face interaction. As they
develop, móre serious relationships are even more fraught-with
issues óf potential embarrassment and misunderstanding. This is
partly beCause relationships often assume equivalence, that at any
given time both partners are approximately. equal in their com-
mitment. Fiction is full of the problems of one person wanting
to commit.before the other is ready, or one per§on misinterpret-
ing signals as to how much someone else really wants them to
spend time together. Facebook enables people to research others
before they decide whether to invest themselves in a new relation-
ship. This is most often done anonymously rvithout that person
knówing they are being researched. In Aaron's and Alana's por-
traits, Facebook is a place for banter and chat, especially between
young men and women. They can thereby get to know about
each other without the dread embarrassment of actually asking
for a date and possibly being refused. Many people also research
long-term frienás, whom they are about to meqt again, in order to
savá themselves from the embarrassment of having fotgotten srimp
766 The Anthropology of Facebook
important life event or more uivial details about what they have
been doing for the last few days so that, when they do meer, they
can seem up-to-speed on the friendship itself.
Prior to Facebook, the internet had already developed as a
vast dating agency. Some of the most significant social network-
ing sites, such as Friendster, were initially developed largely with
this function in mind.1 In Trinidad, the knowledge that men and
women certainly check each other out is one of the key reasons for
looking fit and sexy online. In the first portrait, Marvin puts rhis at
its crudest when he claims that, whatever relationships people are
in, they also always fantasize about 'trading up'.
Much of the most tedious literature on Facebook concerns the
question of whether a friend. on Facebook is a real friend. This
blithely ignores the vast spectrum of people we may choose to call
friends in offline worlds.2 There is no one so stupid as to presume
that all their 700 friends on Facebook are suddenly equivalent
to close offline friends. One rather neat academic paper showed
college students being impressed by peers whose Facebook friends
numbered up to 302, but over this number the esteem in which
they are held falls again.3 We recognize that there is a huge spec-
trum of actual interest or concern among Facebook friends. Best
friends, who are barely out of each other's company, may also
post incessantly on each other's walls. They will commonly be
best Facebook friends. Equally, there are people who are friended
for the sole purpose of adding to rhe total number of friends, so
that the act of Facebook friending can be inconsequential. More
importandy, people have quickly come to recognize the new genre
of purely Facebook friends, people you come to know much
better because you see their postings every day. You may occa-
sionally comment on them but you are never likely to meer them
in any other capacity than on Facebook. §íhen I first went onto
Facebook, I agreed to be friended by ex-studenrs, though after
a short while I stopped this. But some of those early Facebook
friends are people I feel I have now come to know quite well,
I boyd, d. and Ellison, N, (2007), 'social Networking Sites: De6nition, History and
Scholarship', Journal of Computer-Mediated C,ommunication l3(1), article 11, http'Jl
I 3/issue 1/boyd.ellison.htual.
2 icmc.indiana.edu/vol
Pahl, R. (20001, On Friendship, Cambridger Poliry.
3 Ton6 S., Van Der Heide, B. and Langwell, L. (2008), 'Too Much of a Good Thing? The
Relationship Berween Number of Friends and Interpersonal Impressions on Face6ook',
Joumal of Compat*-Mediated C,ommanication 13: 531-49,
Fifteen Theses on'What Facebook Might Be 167
which was not the case when they were students, yet I still never
expect to see them again. I don't think any of us care whether or
not we are properly called a friend.
The re¿son for the prevalence of such debates may be more
than just pedantic semantics. In conversations about Facebook,
there is a common theme that pertains to a Íear of the modern.
This is the fear that we are all becoming more superficial, that
Facebook friends represent a kind of inflation that diminishes the
value of prior or true friendship. I see no evidence that this is the
'We
case: close friends are even more intensely in touch. can also
theorize about how Facebook can proliferate friendship without
diminishing it by observing that Facebook clearly provides greater
efficiencies in friendship. Thanks to Facebook, one can maintain
a friendship with less expenditure of time or dependency upon
transport. It is possible to argue that driving two hours to see
someáne is a sign of deep friendship. But it is equally possible to
argue that using those two hours in direct IM communication,
diJcussing, for áxample, the breakup of someone else's relation-
ship or ieciprocally viewing our activities, makes for a deeper
friendship tñan sitting in traffic just so we can meet face to
face.
Ethnographic fieldwork over several proiects provides evidence
that comhunicative technologies can have a significant effect on
sexual relationships.'Working on the impact of mobile phones in
Jamaica,a it seeméd very likely that the increase in the ease
with
*tri.tt people can have private personal conversations had, in and
of itself, n illi.it or multiple sexual liaisons more common and
"de
easier to get away with. This may be one of the most significant
cooseqo"ñ.es of ihe spread of mobile phones. By contrast, while
Facebáok can also bJ used for secret assignations, the evidence
from Trinidad suggests that in the main it has the opposite effect.
No one ever knows who might be taking a picture of them and
posring it on Facebook. Almost evefyone had stories about friends
who hád had photos posted with people they were not supposed
to have been with. My goess would be that Trinis are having
less illicit or multiple sexual relationships simply because it has
become that much harder to keep these from the public gaze, in
4 Horsr, H. and Miller, D. (2006), The CeIl Phone: Anthropology of Cotnmunication.
Oxford: Berg.