An excellent diary currently on the rec list makes an argument against joining Facebook. It makes three cogent and important points: that Facebook does not determine real friendship; that social networking takes a lot of time; and that social networking sites like Facebook can lead to the breakdown of real relationships.
Useful as that diary is, I want to respond to it in two ways. First, I want to suggest that the problems associated with Facebook (here used as a synecdoche for all social networking, including LinkedIn, MySpace, Academia.edu, etc.) are more illusory than real. Second, I want to suggest why Facebook should be embraced by those of us interested in progressive political change.
Part 1: Facebook Problems: Real or Illusory?
The anti-Facebook diary makes three arguments against Facebook. I'll use the diarist's bullet points and then suggest answers.
1. You're already my friend, or you're not. Well, that's true of course, in a narrow sense, although I consider myself a kind of virtual acquaintance of the Termite. And social networking does prompt one to evaluate what friendship means. Should I "friend" the person I kindasortaknew in high school? Other, real friends of mine are Facebook friends of that person, even though I thought he was kind of a dick, and he probably thought the same about me, and what's more, he was probably closer to right.
But look here. Social networking has allowed me to connect with my cousin in London, my brother and family in Singapore, my old buddy Sam at Princeton, my super-conservative step-brother-in-law in New Jersey, and a couple of dozen people I knew in college, including my college roommate who, when he dropped out, was last seen heading west in his dad's Volvo with a trunk full of well-pressed clothes and a Mason jar full of weed. These are all my "real" friends, and they have become my friends again thanks to Facebook. Or rather, thanks to our shared use of the technology.
My point is this: friendship is not a commodity. But widely distributed networks are not easy to maintain. Every time I move or change jobs, I lose track of a few friends. If Facebook stays in business, we can stay in touch in any event.
2. I don't have time. Well, who the fuck does, really? If Facebook can help maintain real relationships, as I think it can, then it takes time. Does it take less or more time than other technologies, such as the phone, email, snail-mail? That depends on the user. As for job searching, hasn't the idea of networking been a staple of the job search literature for decades before the web-mediated social network?
3. You Facebook people are starting to scare me. Stories of Facebook lunacy are like local news stories: anecdotes trumped up to create fear. Until someone does a controlled study showing differences in behavior, they have nothing to do with reality.
Some sad facts: since the dawn of history, marriages have been scuttled, friendships broken, feuds conducted. It didn't take Facebook to sprinkle the human population with lives variously screwed up, incompetent, impulsive, and repressed.
Part 2: What Facebook has to do with Progressive Politics
If you're like me, you spend a lot of time in the progressive blogosphere. I read Daily Kos, well, daily. Other daily reads include TPM, The Rude Pundit, Sadly, No!, The Poor Man, Eschaton, and Digby's place. You probably have your own list. I read other blogs too -- science blogs, mainly, and occasional excursions into wingnuttia -- as well as news sites. But here's the thing: most of the people in the progressive blogoshere share my politics, more or less. We'll differ on Israel/Palestine, on prosecution of Bush administration officials, on tactical issues. But the fact is, progressive blogs are a function of The Big Sort.
Think back to your childhood. Do any of you remember political arguments at the dinner table? I do. Were there ever guests involved? There were at my house, but I grew up outside Washington DC, where politics was part of life. But even then, we got into great rows. My parents disagreed with the neighbors and guests (and with each other, too) on tons of things. Everybody did, and everybody was a little uncomfortable with political arguments. But they happened, and mostly the relationships survived.
I use Facebook to fight the Big Sort. I post things there (links to my Obama in Burma-Shave poems, news items on Israel/Palestine, even things from Daily Kos) and we get into some wonderful arguments. A friends I've known since childhood calls me naive. A former student sticks up for me in response. People who are connected by their shared relationship with me talk to each other, and learn. It's like my childhood dinner table, but much, much bigger.
So go ahead. Get on Facebook (or another social network). Fight for what you believe, and fight the Big Sort at the same time.