SPOTLIGHT: You are Special v. 2.0
April 2, 2008
Jillian Snyder
Just Say Anything
Have you heard about Juicy Campus? Or for that matter, have you heard who’s on Juicy Campus? If not, you should. Or should you?
Started by Matt Ivester, a graduate of Duke University, Juicy Campus is a virtual space for campus gossip. Launching its beta program on several dozen campuses, it is a fast-growing phenomenon on the Internet. The basic premise of the website allows its users to post, as the website asserts, “anonymous, uncensored gossip about classmates.” In this radical form of self-expression, students can anonymously slander their classmates, faculty, or just about anything else without any fear of repercussion. Flouting the U.S.’s First Amendment right – that the U.S. Congress cannot make any law “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press” – the site cannot be sued for what it asserts are simply matters of opinion concerning other people. On the site’s FAQ page, under the question, “What if I see a comment isn’t true?” the site operator states that while facts can be untrue, giving one’s opinion cannot, and conclude that, “we believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.”
The campus backlash toward Juicy Campus has varied. The undergraduate student union at Pepperdine University, a Christian liberal arts school in California, recently voted to have the website blocked on campus, but the IT staff on campus refused to do so, perhaps over fear of censorship concerns.
Individuals are also taking action to combat the site such as Caitlyn Murphey, a 2nd year Radio-TV-Film student at Texas Christian University. Murphey found out about the Juicy Campus after the university’s undergraduate student union passed a motion encouraging the campus not to visit the site. When people she knew were personally affected by Juicy Campus, she decided to take action, saying, “I know how much words can hurt some people.” Murphey began a Facebook group called “Students Against Juicy Campus,” which seeks to combat the site via boycott – a plan that most who oppose the site have chosen.
She relates her anger over Juicy Campus’ raunchy content: “It’s cowardly if you ask me. I believe if someone has a problem with someone else, they should tell that person to their face, not post anonymously for the entire world to see.”
Murphey may be onto something with her accusations. It seems that lately the Internet has provided a foray into the realm of the anonymous, allowing just about anyone to post just about anything. Sites range from the ever-popular Rate My Professors, where students can dish out the good, the bad and the ugly on their profs to Group Hug, another anonymous website, where people can post online confessions. Even the media is facing this sort of barrage of anonymous “speech.” For instance, a recent comment on our very own Mars’ Hill online featured one user sharing a private physical struggle that resulted in circumcision. While comments such as these are certainly not unusual on the Internet, put them in another context, say, a letter to the editor or a conversation, and they appear outright bizarre. How is it then that the Internet has become a venue for this sort of personal expression?
On Display for the World to See
On the other end of the virtual spectrum is the public world of social networking. Sites such as Facebook and MySpace make it simple to array large amounts of information while retaining one’s “privacy” on the other side of the computer screen. In this way, one’s life, from infancy to the present can be captured through a variety of interests, photos and messages. From this rise of social networks new questions have arisen about the privacy of information as well the portrayal of information. For the first time in history, millions of peoples’ lives are on display in a very public setting.
Those who have Facebook or MySpace find it not unusual to find themselves “tagged” in a photograph, flattering or not. While they may have the power to decide whether or not they choose to be identified in that photo, they have absolutely no power whether or not that picture is displayed, except perhaps by contacting its owner.
Another incredibly unusual phenomena rising with social networking is the presence of comment walls. A date, a breakup, an argument – these have left the private sphere of the personal conversation and now passed to the very public wall. Three years ago, I was offended by a short-lived boyfriend who was crass enough to send me an email from across the continent to inform me that our relationship was “not working out.” Now, I should not be surprised to find a similar situation occurring on my wall for all of my Facebook friends to see.
When it comes to posting information about oneself, most social networking users are highly scrupulous of what they choose to display, whether it be political views, profile picture or books. For most users, each piece is carefully chosen so as to flaunt something crucial to that person’s lifestyle or point of view.
Even things that one does not choose for a profile seems more deliberate than one would think. Christie Pederson, a fourth-year Education student noted, that she doesn’t list items such as her political and religion affiliations on her Facebook because, “I don’t feel that they can be described in one word like ‘Christian’ or ‘Conservative’ – I don’t like putting my beliefs in a box because I don’t think they fit in one.” Pederson’s sentiments echo another fellow Facebook user’s religious views: “Why is it that can you put anything you want in here and only fill in one word for your political views?” It should be noted that political views can now exceed the one-word answer.
What emerges from the presence of these profiles is simple, despite whether or not they display information, notwithstanding how much or what kinds of information they display. In short, our self-obsession with displaying, posting and confessing have morphed our generation into a one-person exhibition: a self-edited projection put on a virtual pedestal for the world to see.
How bizarre. In a world with increasing fears over identity theft and the privacy of information, it would appear that conveying the whole of one’s existence for an unsolicited number of people to view on a regular basis does not seem to worry many university students. Most lessons to take personal information have taken a bit of “spooking” first, such as the case of Jessica Chelton, a university student from Baltimore, MD who received a message from a fellow MySpace user who found her address and phone number from a picture of her student identification card featuring her first and last name. Chelton writes, “He was sending it as a warning to me, and I appreciated it and took down the picture.”
In spite of such clear threats, why is it that so many people have succumbed to displaying unusual amounts of personal information? What is the reason for the one-man exhibition?
A Generation of Narcissists
With so much confessing, talking and flaunting, one needs to wonder how technology is reflecting the self-image of university students, or how university students’ self-image is reflecting technology. After all, it is university students who are behind sites such as Facebook and Juicy Campus, and it is university students who comprise the majority of their users. What has happened that we have become a generation that is, to put it bluntly, self-obsessed?
In her radically insightful book, Generation Me, Dr. Jean M. Twenge examines data from elementary school students to young adults – those born from the 1970s to the early part of this decade – to compile what she believes are the traits of an overly narcissistic generation.
Twenge believes that the relentless emphasis on self-esteem in education throughout the 1980s and 1990s – articles on self-esteem increased 52 per cent alone in the 1990s from a decade prior – has significantly contributed to the arrival of a generation with one person in mind, themselves. As she writes, “Generation Me is the first generation raised to believe that everyone should have high self-esteem.”
However, Twenge asserts that much of the material pushing self-esteem is “usually promoting feelings that are actually a lot closer to narcissism” – a trait she defines as more closely associated with “excessive self-importance.” For example, Twenge points out that only 12 per cent of 14-16 year-olds in the 1950s agreed with the statement, “I am an important person.” In contrast, the same study in the 1980s yielded an 80 per cent agreement. In addition, university students who took the Narcissistic Personality Inventory in 2006, were noted to be 65 per cent more narcissistic than those who took the survey in 1987.
Couple this penchant for self-importance with the advent of a technological world that allows people to effectively hide behind a computer screen, and the unsolicited amounts of information floating across the virtual realm becomes painstakingly clear.
With the erroneous belief that we are indeed going to be or are already people of high-importance, it is logical that our presence should be known in some realm or another. Gazing with utmost adoration at our perfectly captured profile photo – or, in my case, recently breaking my digital camera trying to take one – we present an image of ourselves inconsistent with our own faultiness and temporality. Instead, we become like L. Frank Baum’s infamous Wizard of Oz, who appears in the world of fantasy as a great and powerful personage, but, dwelling behind that curtain in the Emerald City, turns out to be nothing more than a pithy talking head behind the curtain.
In the same way, the unrestricted access to technology, along with the endless “you are special” mantra that much of today’s university students have been imbued with throughout their childhood years have had a similar effect: we are the powerful Oz hiding behind the virtual curtain, and perhaps we are all the more lonely because of it.
Now you go...
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