Awhile back, Time's analyst of all things Geek, Lev Grossman, mused, "I figure once the real-world federal government inevitably crumbles, we'll just be left with massive online communities as our primary political affiliations. MySpace and Facebook will become distributed nation-states along the lines of Neal Stephenson's burbclaves in Snow Crash. Let the new Cold War commence."
It's not a Cold War, Lev. It's a class war, as is able explained by Danah Boyd's essay on the class differences laid bare by the relative demographics of Facebook and Myspace, and how hard such things are to talk about. For instance, I've long joked that MySpace demonstrates the essential aesthetic horror of the American psyche. It turns out that the people didn't want the clean, elegant interfaces of Friendster and Orkut, but sparkly cursors, and five seconds of music videos, and colors so garish they'll make a parent drop dead at 40 paces. Boyd explains where that feeling comes from:
Most teens who exclusively use Facebook are familiar with and have an opinion about MySpace. These teens are very aware of MySpace and they often have a negative opinion about it. They see it as gaudy, immature, and "so middle school." They prefer the "clean" look of Facebook, noting that it is more mature and that MySpace is "so lame." What hegemonic teens call gaudy can also be labeled as "glitzy" or "bling" or "fly" (or what my generation would call "phat") by subaltern teens. Terms like "bling" come out of hip-hop culture where showy, sparkly, brash visual displays are acceptable and valued. ...I'm sure that a visual analyst would be able to explain how classed aesthetics are, but aesthetics are more than simply the "eye of the beholder" - they are culturally narrated and replicated. That "clean" or "modern" look of Facebook is akin to West Elm or Pottery Barn or any poshy Scandinavian design house (that I admit I'm drawn to) while the more flashy look of MySpace resembles the Las Vegas imagery that attracts millions every year. I suspect that lifestyles have aesthetic values and that these are being reproduced on MySpace and Facebook."
Seems right. Boyd goes on:
"In sociology, Nalini Kotamraju has argued that constructing arguments around "class" is extremely difficult in the United States. Terms like "working class" and "middle class" and "upper class" get all muddled quickly. She argues that class divisions in the United States have more to do with lifestyle and social stratification than with income. In other words, all of my anti-capitalist college friends who work in cafes and read Engels are not working class just because they make $14K a year and have no benefits. Class divisions in the United States have more to do with social networks (the real ones, not FB/MS), social capital, cultural capital, and attitudes than income....My friends who are making $14K in cafes are not of the same class as the immigrant janitor in Oakland just because the share the same income bracket. Their lives are quite different.
Part of what's at work here is that class shouldn't be intuited from an economic snapshot. I'm not making very much money right now, but my likely growth over the next few decades is much larger than that of the janitor's. Moreover, there's an issue of potential here. I'm choosing a low-income field, but it would be easy enough for me to take the LSAT, dart off to law school, and quintuple my salary. Not choosing that option doesn't mean it's not there. Should class actually be tied to the most-renumerative reality you could feasibly inhabit?
Indeed, that's the question, isn't it? What are the best indicators of class: Education? Median income of friends? Of parents? Of mentors? And, soon enough, will membership in MySpace or Facebook be added to that list as a relevant indicator?
