Facebook versus MySpace is just how the Web 2.0 world expresses U and non-U
TOBY YOUNG Not long ago, an obscure journal published what must rank as the most controversial essay of the 21st century. No, I'm not talking about The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy', an attack on the influence of the Jewish lobby that appeared in the London Review of Books. I'm referring to 'Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace' by Danah Boyd.
Ms Boyd is a 29-year-old PhD student in the Sociology Department of the University of California, Berkeley and the reason her essay was so inflammatory is that she dared to raise the spectre of social class in a discussion of social networking sites on the internet. Her conclusions were accompanied by all sorts of riders and qualifications, and she bent over backwards to sound as non-judgmental as possible, referring to MySpace users as 'subaltern' and Facebook users as thegemonic', but these subtleties were lost on the media. `MySpace is for poor kids, Facebook is for WASPS' is how one newspaper reported her findings.
Ms Boyd was writing about America, but her observations are equally true of Britain. I've been a member of both MySpace and Facebook for at least two years and while MySpace is populated by a vast array of hip, alternative types (disc jockeys, musicians, skateboarders), Facebook users are almost exclusively upper-middle-class professionals and/or their children. It's the internet equivalent of U and Non-U.
If anything, this divide is even more pronounced in the UK because, as a nation, we're so class-conscious. The great thing about Facebook is that it offers people an almost limitless number of ways to advertise their superior social standing — something that U-types are particularly keen on in my experience. I don't simply mean you can post a picture of yourself standing next to a celebrity — though, God knows, we've all done that — or even that you can advertise your membership of U-sounding groups, such as 'I'd rather be hunting'. (There's even one called 'I say loo not toilet'.) No, I'm talking about the 'update your status' button that enables you to tell all your friends exactly what you're doing at any given moment. It is this feature, more than anything else, that allows Facebook users to flaunt just how successful they are.
A cursory check of my own Facebook profile, for instance, reveals that two hours ago a marketing consultant informed her fellow users that she is 'off to Yorkshire for a weekend of abstinence, yoga and hiking', while 16 hours ago, a PR lady said she couldn't get to sleep because she'd just appeared on a live television programme. The 'update your status' feature is a notice board on which you can boast about your latest triumphs.
For a Facebook user, the ultimate confirmation that you've arrived is if someone else tries to impersonate you on the site. I had no idea how widespread this practice was until I applied to become Facebook friends with 'Harold Pinter', 'Daniel Craig' and 'Angelina Jolie' — and they all said yes. Clearly, they couldn't possibly be the real deal. I subsequently discovered that there are at least 20 people masquerading as 'Boris Johnson', all of them pumping out regular status updates — 'Just back from Henley' — in the hope of passing themselves off as the Blond Bombshell.
In spite of being an early adopter of Facebook, I have never been paid this compliment. At one stage, I seriously considered creating a fake 'Toby Young' profile myself, but then I realised that the 'Toby Young' in question wouldn't be someone masquerading as me — it would be me. The only solution would be to pay someone else to do the pretending — which would be a bit like paying someone to stalk you. I know of several photographers who have been hired by D-list celebrities to follow them around all evening, masquerading as paparazzi, but, as yet, no Web 2.0 entrepreneur has started a fake internet identity business.
I may have more luck on MySpace. According to Danah Boyd, MySpace users are people who were 'socially ostracised at school'. When I was at school, I set up an organisation called 'A Sensible Approach to Nuclear Questions' that was designed to antagonise left-wing CND types. The trouble is, this was in 1979 and everyone at the school, apart from me, fell into that category. At heart, I'm a 'subaltern' rather than a tegemonic' and I should stop pretending otherwise.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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