What surfaces and what do we miss when all traces of our textual avatar is deleted from a group?
If posts are representations of a person – their voice, so to speak – what does it say about group behaviour online when we ignore or remain neutral to status updates?
In a fit of frenzy, when I was feeling particularly stir-crazy, I deleted the more than 100 posts I had up on a Facebook group I am part of. A hundred-odd status updates, news and information links, poetry, polls, video, and photo uploads that were specific to the interests and theme of the group – digital native culture. The hardest part was the fact that of the 70-plus members, not a one noticed this ‘transgression’. The most surprising fact is that I didn’t get all hyper-emotional for losing vital bits of what I had invested in the group for more than a year. So, what gives?
Well, it wasn’t all mayhem. I was particularly interested in finding out if, firstly, would anyone notice the missing posts; secondly; would anyone ‘miss’ the deletions on an emotional note; thirdly, would it concern anyone enough that posts that were Liked, Commented and Gushed over were no longer available to the group as an archive; fourth, did anyone think that I unfairly deleted posts that was partly, group property, considering so many of them commented and expressed considered opinions on them; and lastly, what are the qualities that we attribute to posts – are they merely information bytes, or do people use them as reference to understand the person behind the posts?
The last point is crucial to delve into considering that group members on Facebook hardly meet each other, especially if the original way they came together was virtual and not an offline-meet up-turned-cyber-hangout. So, the way we interact within a group is, apart from one-on-one or one-to-many group chats is primarily through the dozen postings. The posts become a guide to form impressions on group members: someone who simply Likes several hundred posts over the year but never responds through comments would be considered a lurker or a introvert, neutral or talk-shy person. At other times, posters can be classified as information sharers, information consumers, opinion makers, persuaders or other personality-types within groups. There is much to make sense of from those posts!
In a group, an overt response to your post or links is the only way to ascertain if you have been heard. Posts serve an informational as well as emotive, neutral or non-descript functional values. Being seen as ‘data’ rather than a person’s voice makes it difficult to formulate a framework within which we make sense of the way we “treat” persons and their online contribution.
Coming back to the original sleuthing goals, if no one missed the deletions and hardly anyone noticed that certain important news links or Infographics are gone forever, what does that say about the ‘value’ we ascribe to people as well as the collective presence of a group? That’s just like posting a Facebook update, ‘I am feeling miserable after my dog died’, for example and no one decides to respond to it. And is it really about a calculative action: do I, should I comment or Like beneath an update, do I skip it over, do I scroll to more interesting news; do we deliberate over it so consciously?
This brings us to the question: Are all posts given the same value? Perhaps, some of you might already ask to change the interrogative context to, ‘Should all the posts be given the same value’ for which the answer would be an obvious no. Think about this, while conversing in a physically present group on a physical plane, you make an announcement or talk about the most mundane of things, knowing that you have the surety, guarantee, of being heard. After all, your voice can’t be shut out. It’s a different matter to gauge whether your group is paying attention to your speech or if they are tuning you out. However, you are guaranteed feedback, either through verbal or a facial cue, or via body language. If the importance we assign to posts is set at an arbitrary level, no one is guaranteed any measurable response and the Message Board of Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site just becomes another graffiti wall, no response required, it’s all over in the process itself.
Ok, so the sum-total of all my energies and efforts to curate interesting links for the group and start an inspiration thread on a post-Singularity dystopian future didn’t so much as register a blip on the attention radar of the members when it all (the posts) vanished overnight. I waited, tapped fingernails on keyboard, prayed to the cyber-goddess shakti to salvage my vanity, and eventually the impatient hyper-enthusiast in me leaked the ‘secret’ to a couple of group members. The reaction? They ended up seeing my riotous deletions as a “lol, fun” activity rather than a “subversive experiment in chronicling the value of our textual detritus” that I intended it to be. So much for Rainbow’s Gravity.
Well, I have erased all traces of my past. I have erased the back story that made references to what gave me a kick and what saddened me. I bet, I bet you a good deal of the gold pot at the end of the rainbow that not many of you would remember a quarter of all I said, debated, disliked or even stayed non-committal about. If you don’t have proof of the text that gave evidence to my existence as a group member, what are you going to rely on to talk to me today? Are your impressions of me good enough to keep us going for another year? Were you paying attention to me? Or are you just another info-junkie feeding off the textual high of reading, sifting, collecting, linking and sharing data?
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Remembering What Is Left Behind
The alphabets wax and wane
the afterimage of a fly’s winged path
eluding capture
except in bursts and blasts
And when all is but memory
When I no longer breathe my last
Neither shall the words remain
To stand testimony of my past
All is deleted, all is erased
What surfaces to the top
Are others’ traces
half three quarters of forget-me-nots
- Nilofar Ansher
