6.2 -- Reproaches and Levels of The Facebook Offense

Interestingly, this assignment was a little more difficult for me than I expected, because so many of the online behaviors that we have come to see as societal norms are now almost second nature to us. Well, maybe second nature is going a little far, but I definitely had to think to come up with two examples of reproaches. This fact in and of itself goes to show how quickly we adapt to our surroundings, and expect certain similar actions from others.

The two reproaches I will use both took place on Facebook (What can I say, I'm addicted). I'll start with the one involving my roommate L's profile picture. A few months ago, she put up a picture of Eva Longoria as her profile picture. This went against the norm of putting up a clear picture of oneself, and people immediately noticed her deviant behavior. People posted things on her wall like "hey, that's not you!" and "nice picture". After about a week, someone even poseted "what's with the pic?". While the posts at first were more of a humorous nature, people expected that she would change the picture after a day or so, and when she didn't, the posts became less humorous and more accusator. She ended up putting her real picture back up. Thus, the reproach was successful, possibly because of the number of people that reacted to the breach of the norm in a similar way. When people seemed no longer amused (and conveyed their lack of amusement through their posts), L changed her picture back to the societal norm: a picture of herself. This relates to Wallace's theoretical issues if we consider facebook users as a group, and recognize that in that group, it is going against the norm to put up a picture that is not oneself. The reproach was somewhat more vocal than just a 'raised eyebrow', in response to a somewhat more obvious type of offense; what Wallace would most likely call a factual error. Because the other group members assume that the profile picture is of you, it is similar to a lie to put up a picture of someone else.

The second example I am going to reference deals with a more subtle breach of facebook norms. In this particular case, D, a boy I know, would message me constantly on facebook. The messages weren't unsuitable to be read by the other members of the facebook group, as a message would normall indicate, or even necessarily personal in nature. It seemed that he simply didn't want to post on my wall. While it didn't bother me, per say, it was just a strange way to act, and I began to feel like maybe he was trying to keep our relationship secret from someone, perhaps my brother. Instead of asking him about why he messaged me instead of posting on my wall, I simply continued to post on his wall every now and then the way I posted on other people's walls. I didn't want to bring up the possibility that he was trying to hide our friendship in case that really wasn't the case, because then I would have put that idea into his head. This is representative of my own desire not to stray from the norm, because bringing it up to him would make it an even bigger deal than it was in the first place, and the offense simply wasn't bad enough in my opinion to escalate it to a higher level. According to Wallace, I am holding up the societal norm because I continue to post on his wall whenever I have something to say, but because the rule is unwritten, I am hesitant to change the nature of the rule. Wallace would also relate my reproach to that of the "raised eyebrow" because I did not come out and state his offense, but simply kept posting on his wall in hopes that he would catch on. He didn't. I still don't really know why he doesn't post, because I'm sure he understands the logistics of facebook. Even though my reproach was unsuccessful though, it wasn't exactly a big deal. A more successful reproach would have to be constituted by a more severe facebook offense.