{"id":14119,"date":"2013-01-24T21:37:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-25T01:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=14119"},"modified":"2020-06-13T15:03:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T19:03:30","slug":"a-big-fat-fakebook-wedding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/01\/24\/a-big-fat-fakebook-wedding\/","title":{"rendered":"A Big Fat Fakebook Wedding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Whether they\u2019ve joined me on Twitter, sneakily coerced me into spending more time on Facebook, or just like to go on at length about how social networking sites are \u201cstupid and a waste of time,\u201d it seems my friends never tire of talking to me about social media. Given my line of work, this is pretty great: it means a never-ending stream of food for thought (or \u201cnetworked field research,\u201d if you will). This post\u2019s analysis-cum-cautionary tale comes to you through my friend Otto (we\u2019ll refer to him by his nom de plume<\/em>), who got himself into some pseudonuptial trouble last week.<\/p>\n

It started when Otto was invited to a \u201cwedding party\u201d\u2014which, as he explained it to me, is a party where the guests come dressed in fancy clothes; two people are selected to get married via a game of Hot Potato; a Mad Libs style prenuptial agreement is filled out after a wonderful hens night<\/a><\/span> with the sexiest male strippers making night memorable<\/span> ; the new couple is \u201cmarried\u201d in a (non-binding) ceremony; and then everyone enjoys the reception. As it happened, Otto was hot-potatoed into being one half of the married couple, and so \u201cmarried\u201d his friend (a young woman) who had invited him. He said that although he\u2019d been skeptical of the party\u2019s premise, it turned out to be a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

The trouble began when Otto got home and thought, \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be funny if I posted these pictures and changed my status on Facebook?\u201d<\/p>\n

To Otto, his Facebook relationship status was no more \u201creal\u201d or serious than the Mad Libs prenup, or the ridiculous ceremony itself. He changed his profile picture to a photo taken at the party: himself in a tailcoat and top hat, his friend in a white dress, the two of them standing arms-around-waists and smiling beneath a tree in the park where the party took place. Otto\u2019s friend confirmed the status change, and so their \u201cFakebook Marriage<\/a>\u201d became \u201cFacebook Official<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Donut wedding cake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u2019m not always on top of my Facebook feed, so the first I saw of this was in one of those \u201cfour of your friends changed their profile pictures\u201d items. I was checking Facebook on my phone while standing in line somewhere, and there in a grid of four tiny pictures was what did appear to be a wedding picture. \u201cOh, someone I know got married, that\u2019s nice,\u201d I thought. Obviously I\u2019d have known ahead of time if any of my closer friends were getting married, so I assumed one of the barely visible figures in the photo was just someone I sort-of knew from high school.<\/p>\n

A day or two later I was checking Facebook again, and suddenly my feed was full of \u201c[friend] posted on Otto\u2019s Wall\u201d items. That\u2019s weird\u2014why were a number of my other close friends telling Otto \u201ccongratulations\u201d? I clicked over to Otto\u2019s profile, and was surprised to see that wedding picture. (Wait, what?) I scrolled down a bit further, and saw the \u201cMarried\u201d item. The other name listed wasn\u2019t Otto’s girlfriend, so I just started laughing; the random absurdity not just of a fake marriage, but of a documented<\/em> fake marriage, was precisely his style of shenanigans.<\/p>\n

Still, so many of the comments on his wall seemed to be sincere that I started to wonder. It had been about a week since I\u2019d seen Otto; was it possible that, rather than so surprisingly few of us getting the joke, a few of us were just such cynical jerks that we didn\u2019t realize he\u2019d actually eloped (or something)? I sent a text, to which Otto replied, \u201c*laughs* It\u2019s pretty hilarious\u2026Have you seen my wall?<\/em>\u201d By the time Otto was telling me the whole story over dinner a few days later, however, he had taken the picture down and removed his new relationship status; his amusement had also waned considerably.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it turns out…people take that stuff really<\/em> seriously<\/em>,\u201d he said. It had never occurred to Otto that anyone would think he\u2019d actually gotten married; nor had it occurred to him that many of his Facebook friends would even see his relationship status change. He knew about Facebook\u2019s filtering algorithms, and how few of his friends he could expect to see any given post\u2014yet, as he put it, \u201cWhen you get married on Facebook, that goes on everybody\u2019s<\/em> feed. Everyone<\/em> sees it.\u201d<\/p>\n

While \u201ceveryone\u201d may not have included all of Otto\u2019s Facebook friends (I know I missed the announcement), \u201ceveryone\u201d did include a number of people whom Otto thought would not<\/em> be able to see his status change. There was the distressed phone call from his mother, for instance, who asked, \u201cIs there anything you want to tell me?\u201d (\u201cThis is why I\u2019m not friends with her on Facebook,\u201d Otto said.) Otto\u2019s long-distance girlfriend was upset as well: although she\u2019d blocked him on Facebook at the time (they were going through \u201ca rough patch,\u201d he says), mutual friends had shown her the photo and the status change. He\u2019d thought the \u201cblock\u201d meant he could execute his prank without hurting her feelings; she thought he\u2019d actually gotten married. This was not a good thing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Real wedding; fake mustaches<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Otto\u2019s story showcases a number of interesting issues that surround social media. First, there\u2019s the obvious anti-digital-dualism point here: the inextricable enmeshment of the physical and the digital enables information to flow readily between online and offline contexts. Even with the tightest of privacy settings, people to whom we are not connected through social media can still receive information we post on social media\u2014sometimes even in its original form; even people who do not connect to (say) Facebook directly are still connected through it. This highlights some of the reasons we need to rethink our conceptializations of privacy, as I\u2019ve argued before<\/a>. (danah boyd\u2019s [@zephoria<\/a>] recent article \u201cNetworked Privacy<\/a>\u201d [pdf] provides a name for the new kind of privacy I argue we need, and does an excellent job of explaining why we need it.)<\/p>\n

Second, what happens on social media is not somehow \u201cless real\u201d than what happens through other media. To many of Otto\u2019s friends, his picture-and-status change was no different than if he had sent out marriage announcements, or placed an ad in the local paper. This doesn\u2019t mean that no one was surprised by his prank, or that some people didn\u2019t wonder what he was thinking, but it does show that to many people (especially those less familiar with the apparently<\/a> contentious<\/a> phenomenon of \u201cFakebook Marriages\u201d), a Facebook marriage announcement bears significance, and has real social weight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a Facebook marriage obviously doesn\u2019t always correspond to a legal marriage. Sometimes a Facebook marriage is a joke; sometimes a Facebook marriage serves to deflect unwanted romantic attention. My own Facebook wife and I got \u201cmarried\u201d almost three years ago, because we both delight in what\u2019s been called \u201cdatabase vandalism\u201d (or alternatively, “statistical noisemaking<\/a>“). I like to picture Facebook\u2019s data mining practices as a colony of ants, and my false data as tasty borax-filled ant bait.<\/p>\n

As social media practices evolve, social media users necessarily have to develop ways both of signaling and of decoding the multiple meanings that something like \u201cmarried\u201d on Facebook can have. (Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but sometimes your friend really did elope.) My theory here is that so many people took Otto seriously because he changed his profile picture and that, if he had simply gotten \u201cmarried,\u201d more of his friends would have been more skeptical. Similarly, if he had changed his profile picture but not changed his status, I\u2019m willing to bet he would have gotten more questions than \u201ccongratulations.\u201d Instead, Otto stumbled across what may be an emerging practice: changing one\u2019s status and<\/em> one\u2019s profile picture when one really does get married.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If Whitney Erin Boesel ever gets fake-married, she’ll be sure to livetweet it. Don’t miss this unlikely eventuality; follow her on Twitter! She’s @phenatypical<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pinterest ecard from http:\/\/www.hercampus.com\/school\/texas\/pinspiration-real-life<\/a><\/em><\/em>
\nDonut wedding cake from http:\/\/doodaddy.net\/2007\/05\/23\/the-krispy-kreme-doughnut-wedding-cake\/<\/a><\/em>
\nWedding mustaches photo from http:\/\/blog.weddingpaperdivas.com\/rant-or-rave-fake-wedding-mustaches\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether they\u2019ve joined me on Twitter, sneakily coerced me into spending more time on Facebook, or just like to go on at length about how social networking sites are \u201cstupid and a waste of time,\u201d it seems my friends never tire of talking to me about social media. Given my line of work, this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":14120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9967],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/01\/pinterestwedding.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1875"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14119"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24325,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14119\/revisions\/24325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}