Social networking: We all signed up for showtime... so follow me

The beginnings of Facebook had perhaps the most subtle of sexual pleasures in them.

As described by Ben Mezrichs’s book The Accidental Billionaires — later adapted in David Fincher’s The Social Network — Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin developed Facemash.com, a website that allows users to vote on who’s hotter, when faced with two randomly selected pictures of women.

Harvard’s men had fun with it, women found it disgusting, but it was this feature of being able to comment on someone else’s activities, which later matured to TheFacebook.com. Zuckerberg and Co turned Ivy League students into voyeurs, by giving them the opportunity to not only browse through pictures of their friends, but also comment on their activities.

“It’s like porn: the content and the performers are nothing special, but people get a strong voyeuristic pleasure from watching others expose their raw, private details,” says Brett Borders, author of the blog, Social Media Rockstar.

Borders adds that browsing through everybody else’s profile pictures often made people feel good about themselves. So much so, they’re often thankful that they’re not posting ridiculous status messages like their friends are. “People are fun to watch when they behave badly,” Borders says.

Most websites today — be it YouTube, Amazon, Ebay — have social media features embedded in them, which means you’re given the chance to share what video you’re watching, what book you just bought or what you held up for auction. Whether you choose to share these details is up to you; they are a window to your personality which state your affiliations. This is evidenced by how rapidly websites all over the world embraced Facebook’s ‘Like’ feature and added it below every article on their websites.

But not everyone’s clicking it. Many are just consuming all that’s happening in your life. “A very small percentage of people actively create content online. A vast majority just like to watch. There’s something incredibly hypnotic about watching a psychological trainwreck of flaring egos and emotions,” says Borders.

But the latest must-have is a following, the ‘culture of narcissism that social media encourages’, says Rohan Babu, head of social media at Media2win, a digital agency. “It almost makes you feel too important; you want to have the right profile picture, a witty status message that makes your friends ‘like’ and comment on, and you want to post pictures that make others go wow. You almost want to make others feel envious, but subconsciously, you’re trying to create a following for yourself.”

Twitter, for example, is explicit in its intentions of helping you gain followers and
allows them to echo tweets they like through the re-tweet feature.

The more you’re re-tweeted, the more followers you have. In a way, it has made people create personal brands, which may result in the formation of the ‘me, me, me’ culture, where every exhibitionist tries tactic to get maximum attention.

That means, the less aggressive feel left out.
Meher Manda (18), a regular Facebook user, testifies that it can get tiring at times.

“Sometimes you have a rough day, and when you log into Facebook, you notice that most of your friends have probably had a much better day — been to a cool party, got a promotion, had an awesome meal or seen a great movie. It almost makes you compare your happiness with that of others.” The dissatisfaction and unease can then either be dissolved by following suit or opting out.

And as it stands, everyone wants to see, and be seen, to charm and be charmed in turn.