Oh, sure, it’s the name of a corporation, but do you know the origins of the name?
A face book is/was a booklet given out to freshmen at colleges at the beginning of the school year. It was an alphabetical listing of all fellow freshpeople and their pictures. The stated reason for producing it was so that new students could get to know one another more quickly if they could look one another up in a guide.
It was a mini-yearbook, to give social interaction on campus a boost.
The face book, though, had other uses. Given only to the new students, it was a prize for upper class students who wanted to have resource for flirting. Upper class folks would keep an eye out for face books in the garbage, and scoop them up to be used in conjunction with the campus phone book (which gave everyone’s name, campus address, and home address,) to get clues about someone of interest.
So, if you were a sophomore and saw a cute freshperson, you could look up their picture in the face book, find out their name, then find out where they live and where in the country they came from. Obsessive types could then try to decipher who else might know them, to see if there was a way to get an introduction of some sort.
The face book was, in this sense, about liking. The end result was an attempt at real interaction.
Useful for many purposes, the face book also has a mild level of creepiness associated with it.
It was also about spying. One could gain information about someone else without much more than seeing them in a crowd. With someone’s name, address, and campus address, it wasn’t that hard to find out other information, such as their roommate’s information, which dining hall they must go to, and in which dorm they might be found hanging out.
Of course, while one person was researching another, someone could be researching them. Everyone had access to the same information, and everyone on campus was included in the face book.
And it was hyper-local. It featured the freshpersons of that specific college or university only.
Zuckerberg knew about the face book face book when he was a student, and his web site was an effort to recreate it online, especially the dating and mating aspect of it. He started it, the story goes, because he felt Harvard was taking too long to bring their official version online.
It’s no coincidence that you can “like” and “friend” people on his site. It’s flirty and non-committal, and in line with the aims of the original face book. (Doubt the dating angle? Zuckerberg got in trouble at one point for using unauthorized photos of students to allow others to rate their attractiveness.)
His site has attempted to become a face book for everyone, extending the spying and dating possibilities beyond the campus.
One addition was to allow businesses and organizations into the mix, allowing them to flirt with and spy on you. This introduced money into the system. Now the face book had two roles – to facilitate gathering information about people we know, but also to turn everyone into a potential customer and a product as well.
Money is winning out. One can now pay for friends, pay for placement, and pay for data about the faces. The social aspect of the face book is on the surface, but underneath it has been replaced with the buying and selling of daily interactions. Daily interactions like finding out about grandchildren or keeping in touch with siblings.
Given the origins of the face book, it is almost sad now to see signs in store windows with businesses pleading to be “liked” or found on Zuckerberg’s web site. To me, they are advertising loneliness and pathos. It would be like a student in a dorm putting a sign on their door – “I’m in the face book!” – and hoping people on campus looked them up in the paper guide rather than knocking on the door and saying hello.
Or, put another way, imagine if businesses had signs proudly announcing that they could be “found in the phone book!” We’d feel sorry for their situation. It isn’t an accomplishment to crow about.
The original face book was useful, fun, and occasionally used for trying to woo someone. It relied on making contact with other people in person to let them know you liked them, and to find out if they liked you back. They might say no! Or, slowly, with shared interests and activities, one could become a genuine, in-the-flesh, friend. The original face book was an essential part of dorm life. May it rest in peace.*
* Some colleges and universities still do this, though most have moved online.
