io9
Reality television, consumed with liberal doses of MySpace and Facebook, will make friendships of the future far more promiscuous. So says a newly-released study about people who invest a lot of time in creating profiles of themselves online (which is increasingly all of us). The authors of the study have discovered an intriguing trend in the way people are re-define "friendship" after hanging out a lot online. The good news is that current trends all point to more casual sex for people who "friend" each other online.
While plenty of studies have already shown that friendships have become much more casual in an era of "friending" random people on MySpace, this new study takes that idea further. Its authors describe how reality TV and social networking sites feed into each other, creating a world where many people think of themselves and their friends less as real people and more like iconic celebrities. The researchers call this a shift toward having "mediated" selves, as if all social interactions take place via the media.
According to PhysOrg:
These heavy [reality TV] viewers also produced a significantly larger number of mediated selves and had a greater intimacy toward, and urge to interact with, the mediated social images of others.In the terms of the study, promiscuous frienders are not literally sleeping around — they are just willing to call people friends even when they aren't necessarily intimate.All of these, say the researchers, are commonly considered celebrity behaviors . . .
"Promiscuous frienders may be reproducing the fame-seeking behavior that is modeled by reality TV characters," [researcher Michael] Stefanone says, adding that these behaviors are believed to reflect the systematic processing of messages and behaviors modeled within the [reality TV] genre.
But if you regard this study as picking up on an early stage in a greater social change regarding friendship, it's easy to see how the good kind of real-life promiscuity might be involved too. If we all begin to see ourselves as mediated people, as celebrities, we're less likely to need intimacy before taking the plunge into the sack. We'll imagine that we "know" somebody already because we've seen them online and so we don't need all those "take me out to coffee" preliminaries before getting busy.
We're All Stars Now [via PhysOrg]
Also, you can check out a PDF of the study.
Comments
Just wait until it becomes fashionable to renounce social networks and have real friends...
Go on, delete^Wdisable your Facebook account! Do it now! It's what all the cool kids are doing!
I'm still trying to process how people being more like reality TV characters = good.
I don't want to live in the world of "I Love New York."
@CargoCult: Yeah good luck on that, Facebook is pretty much the crazy girlfriend that will NEVER let you go... Also they own all your pictures you upload...
If reality T.V. means more nookie for me, I say bring on the cameras!
@Slatz_Grobnik: Yeah, I'm afraid the downside is more superficiality and scary exes stalking you.
@Slatz_Grobnik: Word. ++
Or maybe it has nothing to do with social networking, reality tv or the like. Maybe it's just a liberalization of attitudes towards sex. If we look at Europe we can already see this. An aquaintance of mine once told this story of living in France. He had dated a French woman a couple of time, when the conversation came up. She was shocked to find out it had nearly 2 years for him. Gawking in disbelief she asked if he had truly not had sex that long, finishing the question with "not even for zee health?" I need to go to France.
In the future, everybody will be getting laid but me. Yay! Wait....
@worsethannormal: Studies have shown that the French have more sex. So that might not be illustrating a general trend, but who knows, lots of educated people in urban centres take a practical and almost unemotional look at sex, who's to say whether this is good or bad. If they're practical enough, at least they'll be safe about it.
Hmm. Does that mean the folks who indulge in the occasional social network but don't do the reality TV thing are going to have more INTELLIGENT sex? Cause I'm all about that. ;)
@CargoCult:
some of us are wise enough never to join in the first place.
So are more French people on Facebook and Myspace than I think there are? Because I'm not seeing zee French in zee chatrooms.
I think that for us old fogies (older than 25) this isn't going to be true. Maybe for the kids who never experienced lack of internet... That's a huge generation gap. Think of zee STDs zey will have.
Inspired by the most logical race in the galaxy, the Vulcans, breeding will be permitted once every seven years.
For many of you this will mean much less breeding.
For me, much much more.
It's true. When I got this star next to my name, it was made pretty clear that I'm pretty special. Mediated self? I don't even have time to know what that means! Iconic celebrity, bound in my special status with a number of new friends? You bet!
And ever since, I've been having crazy sex with those other starred commenters across the Gawker Media network.
But not to worry...I'm not so exclusive. I haven't forgotten what it was like before I was an Icon. Of course I'm also open to "friendships" with my "friends," but given the right circumstances, I will even be accepting limited inquiries from "followers" as well.
People go to social netwoking sites to create their own image.
They are also more willing to be "friends" with other people after reading their spiel.
Wow, this sounds like basic marketing, but on a very personal level. Call me old-fashioned but I would like to have met my "friend" at least once in the flesh. And in regards with Facebook/MySpace pages:
- "On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog." Anon
- "Everybody lies." Gregory House M.D., House.
@phoenix: Intelligent sex?
well, it is a sciencefiction blog...
[Just kidding. I love intelligent sex.]
@92BuickLeSabre: um... thanks, but I'll pass.
[sometimes the price of celebrity-by-association is just too high...]
"Automation affects not just production, but every phase of consumption and marketing; for the consumer becomes producer in the automation circuit, quite as much as the reader...makes his own news, or just is his own news." - M. McLuhan, Understanding Media, © 1963
@moff: Aaagh! 1964. Still.
"all point to more casual sex for people who 'friend' each other online."
When did "friend" become a verb? Oh wait, never mind, here's the memo. Apparently the extra 2 letters in the already existing and perfectly good word "befriend," was causing too much thumb strain for today's heavy texters. The good news is that with the sorry state of Public Education these days, no one will notice. (End of rant.)
It seems that this article forgets about one key element in the whole "lax attitude towards befriending [and then doing] new people"-argument, and that is follow-up.
So many opportunities got lost during the days before social networks. Cool people you met at festivals, over at friends or just out clubbing. Now, you can almost always get in contact with them again, and thusly cultivate a relationship where before that wouldn't have happened.
And of course sex enters into that equation. When you have a thousand acquaintances, of totally differing levels of depth, it tends to dawn on you that, just as there are several ways of "having friends" or how you interact differently depending on the crowd, there are different ways to enjoy sex with varying levels of commitment.
This is not teh future. This is now.
And it is good.
So let me get this straight... ladies with online profile are easy(er)? Ok, I'm on it.
Funny there's no mention of Second Life. These themes are the core of that place.
I'm old fashioned and think that more sex with more people just leads to more trouble.
@Katana_Mind: Seconded.
I also don't believe for a second that any rational person considers themselves actual friends with someone who randomly friended them on facebook that they weren't acquainted with in real life.
Facebook is for cataloging acquaintances - that kid from high school, those guys who work on the 8th floor, the gang from your college choir. Those are the friends that Facebook allows us to keep tabs on (without any more interaction necessary, yay!)
Oh, and because I am Facebook member #251 ever (day 2! early adapter! it became big on day 3!) and was in the oh so priveleged position to dictate TheFacebook's use and development in its first weeks, I still get to do so now. Says me.
@RAHfanboy: The grammar split runs to the heart of the matter, really. Friend isn't equal to befriend. To friend is to put on the ____ list, which has greatly different connotations than actually making someone into a friend. The language recognizes this gap between actual personal intimacy and mere shared knowledge.
Aw, who am I kidding? Noun is the new verb.
Yeah, whatever. I don't live my life this way and I have no intention of ever doing so. Most of my friends are shocked when they learn that I've never even signed up for a Myspace or Facebook account, considering I've been online since early '94.
I flatly reject social networking sites as trite and useless. I build my online friendships through community sites, such as message boards, BBSes, or MUDs. Places where there is actually a reason for people to be there, so common interests are much more likely.
But I'm not wired for casual sex, either, I think the experience would be emotionally traumatic for me, so I don't engage in it. The physical need is not so overpowering that it must be satisfied to allow me to live my life, and I refuse to let it grow to that point where it does become that strong.
Maybe it's just me, but I kind of like being more than an animal that ruts in the bushes every chance it gets.
@xv43: Whew, get off that high horse.
@ideaman2020: Wait what? I'm sorry. *chuckles* Surely there has been a misunderstanding. *uncomfortable chuckle* I think you must've missed the part where I explained how awesome I am!
@xv43: It's a good thing you're on a sci-fi blog. This should definitely help reduce the chances of rutting behind the bushes.
It's nice to see the definition of friendship becoming so diluted.
@Miranda Kali: Science fiction in general has been pretty good at doing that for most of us. Asimov was the exception.
@NefariousNewt: Oh I don't know, I used to make out during meetings of the Star Trek club in High School. Of course, the other members gave me flak about it, but there was little they could do...I was a charter member.
@NefariousNewt: I get around okay. Some ladies dig the science.
@Miranda Kali: Ha!
@braak: Yes, they throw little pickles at you whilst you wear sun-god robes. ;)
@Miranda Kali: It's a sweet gig!
@Slatz_Grobnik:Aw, "who am I kidding? Noun is the new verb."
Ha! LOLOL (LOL Out Loud) Right now it probably is as you said, but give it a while...
Miranda Kali: Why am I the only one who has that dream? ;)
@The Blow Leprechaun: You're more like the old generation of Internet netizens, while myspace/facebook/et al is the "new" generation. I didn't think that there would be a well-defined Generation 1/ Generation 2 gap in online life, but I think you've just defined it.
I too have been on the Internet since '94, and I subscribe to Facebook/MySpace and such. Keeping up with the times, I guess.
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