Status | Chicago, Illinois, USA | Oct 2008
While we have created a new set of online activities and behaviors through our increased adoption of online systems and applications, we still largely use a language and set of terminologies ported from the offline world.
Yet we’ve spent little time thinking about the implications.
Couple thoughts:
- What does “status” mean today and how do we display it (online and offline)?
- Why do we use words like “status” to detail our online actions?
- Why do we use words like “friend” to denote our online connections?
- What other words could we use to create different interpretations and reinforce different behaviors?
- Will our increased usage of terms online change how we use them offline? will their offline meaning change as well?
By creating systems that allow us to publicly display, measure and compare some facet of ourselves, we implicitly create societal competition over that artifact.
Obviously this isn’t new:
Hierarchical awareness seems to be deeply embedded in the human brain, so much so that there are distinct circuits activated by concerns over social rank. (ScienceNOW)
People have no obvious outward, physical signs to denote their status, so we rely on artificial ones: the big car, the mansion to live in, the arrogance of manner to inferiors, the ostentatious spending on designer clothes and expensive vacations. (Slow Leadership)
But we face different challenges in the online world:
- Do we want to create competition over the number of friends we have?
- Does the way we use the word “friend” online cheapen the meaning of the word?
- Are we creating systems that encourage narcissism?
- How are using and manipulating online systems to create artificial signals of status?
- Are the notions of visibility and status starting to merge?
- We use a bevy of stereotypes in the offline world to make status judgments: what online stereotypes are we creating?
- What cultural norms are being carried over from offline to online? What new cultural norms are being created offline from our online behaviors?
- Has the increased use of online profiles changed how we use traditional offline ways to signal status?
- How do the traditional signals of status “work” online: possessions, conspicuous consumption, inheritance, landed title, wealth, appearance, family, profession, class, time?
- How do different cultures, nationalities and socio-economic groups use online systems to display their status? How is communicated differently in and across cultures and socio-economic groups?
Thoughts?
