{"id":15199,"date":"2013-04-11T19:33:56","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T23:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=15199"},"modified":"2013-04-11T19:33:56","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T23:33:56","slug":"your-feels-as-free-labor-emoticons-emotional-cultures-and-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2013\/04\/11\/your-feels-as-free-labor-emoticons-emotional-cultures-and-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Feels As Free Labor: Emoticons, Emotional Cultures, and Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feeling-dirty2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t yet noticed (you\u2019ve probably noticed), Facebook likes to appropriate features from competing apps and platforms. You can credit the demise of the old \u201c[Name] is\u2026\u201d status update prompt, for instance, to the rise of Twitter. You may also recognize the \u201cshare\u201d feature on your friends\u2019 status updates from Tumblr; the place check-ins from Foursquare; the friend \u201clists\u201d from Google+; the photo albums from Flickr (or any other photo sharing site); the photo filters from Instagram (back before Facebook bought Instagram outright); the vanishing images of Poke (that\u2019s a newer Facebook app, not the older Facebook feature) from Snapchat; the \u201cMusic\u201d app from Myspace (new or old); or even the \u201cWork and Education\u201d profile field from LinkedIn. Yes, that\u2019s right: voracious media amoeba that it is, Facebook has even engulfed some of LinkedIn. Icky.<\/p>\n

Yet in its seeming quest to digest and regurgitate elements from every digital social technology ever, Facebook most recently appropriated features not from a competing platform or app, but from the pre-Web-2.0 \u2018sharing\u2019 stalwart LiveJournal[i]<\/a>. Remember the \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d field, and the various \u201cMood Theme<\/a>\u201d icons you could use to answer when you weren\u2019t feeling up to free response? If you don\u2019t already, you\u2019ll soon have something similar in a new field on your Facebook status update prompt. Go into that new field and select \u201cfeeling,\u201d and you\u2019ll get to answer \u201cHow are you feeling?\u201d with one of roughly 200 preset emoji\/emotion combinations like it\u2019s 2001 all over again<\/a>. Your profile will then show something like the image above.<\/p>\n

There are some significant differences between LiveJournal\u2019s \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d field and Facebook\u2019s new \u201cfeeling\u201d icons, however, and these differences get at the heart of why\u2014potentially cute\/annoying emoji notwithstanding\u2014talking about your emotions with the new Facebook feature is very different from talking about your emotions on LiveJournal.<\/p>\n

\"feeling-sexy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First, let\u2019s consider the emotional cultures of the two sites. That \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d feature has been a part of LiveJournal since at least 2000 (which when I started my first account), and the fact that it exists is particularly unremarkable when you stop to consider the name of the platform: LiveJournal<\/i>. In this sense, the term \u201cjournal\u201d denotes \u201ca record of news and events of a personal nature; a diary.\u201d While some users chronicled \u201cpersonal events\u201d such as what they had for breakfast (I knew one person who really did do that\u2014mainly to make fun of the rest of us), for many users, the \u201cpersonal\u201d topics we wrote about were things we had feelings about<\/a>, or were our feelings themselves. The \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d field at the end of each post was an afterthought, an opportunity to make a joke or add a closing flourish. LiveJournal\u2019s architecture supported more emotive uses of the platform as well, by offering both unstructured long-form posting and incredible privacy controls. By 2002 or 2003, users could mark any given post \u201cprivate,\u201d \u201cpublic,\u201d \u201cfriends,\u201d or \u201ccustom\u201d\u2014where \u201ccustom\u201d meant selecting one or more of the 30 sub-lists of friends each user could create for her- or himself. (Note, too, that at no point during my 10 active years on LiveJournal did any of my posts spontaneously change their own privacy settings\u2014now that\u2019s<\/i> a feature Facebook should absorb!) It also helped that LiveJournal friending is mono-directional; someone can list you as a friend and grant you access to their \u201cfriends only\u201d posts, for example, whether or not you list them as a friend and grant them access in return.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it was also because I had a long history of private paper journaling when I joined LiveJournal, but to me, LiveJournal always seemed geared toward interiority. It was about talking to myself in a way that was very similar to the way I talked to myself on paper, and then looking at an array of 30 checkboxes to decide whom I wanted to let in (this time). Of course, I don\u2019t mean to imply that there was nothing performative about LiveJournal, or that between my LiveJournals and my paper journals I wrote on exactly the same range of topics, because neither of those things is true. The point is that I never asked myself whether something was an appropriate sentiment for LiveJournal; rather, I asked myself which LiveJournal account I should use, then which subset of friends I should select, then (later, once the feature was introduced) whether I should put the substance of the post behind a cut-tag. The question was never \u201cwhether,\u201d only \u201chow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, if in small group conversation one friend expressed discomfort over the openness of something another friend had posted, the response from the group was invariably, \u201cWell, it\u2019s their journal.\u201d Your LiveJournal was unquestionably yours<\/i>, a forum to be you<\/i> in a way as open and raw and visceral (or as cryptic and closed and distant, for that matter) as you felt comfortable being. While over time certain norms evolved\u2014such as using a cut-tag with particularly long or emotional posts\u2014at least in my social worlds, LiveJournal was construed as a special, privileged space for self-expression. Even the aesthetic elements of LiveJournal seemed to support this: from a variety of available layout schemes, to customizable field text (my \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d field never actually said \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d), to the option to make your own mood theme icons (and free response was always an option, as was leaving the \u201cCurrent Mood\u201d field blank), it really did feel as though your LiveJournal was your own, to say and to do with as you pleased. Writing too negatively and to openly about other people might get one into social trouble, but so long as post authors wrote about themselves[ii]<\/a>, the onus was on readers to eschew posts (or authors) that made them uncomfortable. Though I\u2019m speaking about the norms that I observed within my own circles, the \u201cexpress anything \/ don\u2019t read it if you don\u2019t like it\u201d ethos did and does seem to apply to LiveJournal more broadly\u2014as is perhaps exemplified by some of the more controversial communities (e.g. \u201cpro ana<\/a>\u201d) that have made homes on the site.<\/p>\n

\"feeling-blessed\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook, on the other hand, has a very different emotional culture. It\u2019s Face<\/i>book, for starters: even when one is navel-gazing, one\u2019s face is always pointed out at the exterior world. Your face is\u2014no pun intended\u2014the interface between your interior self (or backstage self, if you prefer) and everything else: you face the day, face the music, face your past and face what\u2019s next. Though our faces are expressive, we\u2019re trained from an early age to (try to) control the expressions our faces make, to filter or even change what we broadcast to others about what\u2019s going on inside of us. Our eyes may be windows to souls, but we also keep stiff upper lips, clench jaws, bite tongues, force smiles, and turn other cheeks (all while grinning and bearing it), because our faces are first and foremost displays we put on for other people. (Oh hey, Goffman: what is it again that we lose when we\u2019ve lost status or credibility with others? Ah, right.) Accordingly, Facebook has never pretended to be the eyes; it has never aspired to be a platform for expressing deep inner truths (\u201ctruths\u201d) about the people we are or believe ourselves to be<\/a>. Journals<\/i> are for vulnerability and heartfelt confessions; facebooks<\/i> are for identifying (and judging) strangers or acquaintances based on surface characteristics. A facebook is not a format for free self-expression, nor is it where you lay yourself bare in a quest for self-knowledge or self-discovery; a facebook is where you fit your finished self into the template provided, as seamless and shiny a self as you can create before the publication deadline. Is it surprising, then, if Facebook\u2019s cultural norms seem to frown on sadness and other forms of negativity (no pun intended)?<\/p>\n

For instance: Despite both pleas and petitions from some users, one feature Facebook has refused to cannibalize from other social media platforms is the \u201cdislike\u201d button (perhaps YouTube and Reddit, among others, breathe sighs of relief). According to Facebook, having \u201clike\u201d without \u201cdislike\u201d to balance it makes being on the site more fun, but is typing out \u201cthis sucks\u201d really more fun than clicking a button? (Ha, ha.) Similarly, just last weekend I overheard a pair of strangers lamenting, \u201cbecause, you know, you can\u2019t say anything depressing on Facebook.\u201d While this isn\u2019t always true (so-called \u201ccyber-bullies,\u201d for instance, say some really depressing stuff), I do have to admit that 90% of the sad-type posts I see in my own Facebook feed are FYI announcements, usually about the death of a friend, relative, or pet. I see very few posts in which people are openly grieving their lost loved ones, or in which people are being sad (rather than angry) about anything else. I argue that this is due not only to top-down culture engineering from Facebook itself, but also because Facebook has always been a forum for fronting, for creating the \u201cgood face\u201d we \u201cput on\u201d for others\u2014which, regardless of one\u2019s chosen gender performance<\/a>, should probably not have mascara running down its cheeks.<\/p>\n

So if interiority has never been Facebook\u2019s forte, and if Facebook has generally preferred that you keep your emo moments opaquely away from its beloved radical transparency, why is Facebook now taking a cue from LiveJournal and letting you proclaim yourself \u201clost\u201d and \u201clonely\u201d<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"feeling-excited\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, here are my thoughts.<\/p>\n

First, do not forget\u2014not for one little instant\u2014that Facebook is a thoroughly Web 2.0 company. It is as Social as they come<\/a>. On the \u2018face\u2019 of it, The Zuck wants you to embrace personal radical transparency<\/a> and change the world by \u201csharing\u201d All The Things (except, of course, for everything he doesn\u2019t want you to share: breastfeeding<\/a>, kissing your same-sex partner<\/a>, the fact that you don\u2019t like the oil company<\/a> British Petroleum, or that everyone calls you \u201cSalman\u201d<\/a> instead of \u201cAhmed,\u201d to name just a few). But backstage, let\u2019s \u2018face\u2019 it: Facebook believes in the information economy. Facebook may not have figured out how, exactly, to monetize all the information it\u2019s collecting, but it\u2019s sold on the premise that more information will someday, somehow, be worth more revenue. Therefore, it wants you (dear user) to do two things: 1) log into the site (which means both viewing ads and giving Facebook information about yourself and your \u2018friends\u2019), and 2) cause more of your friends to log into the site (so that they too view ads and give Facebook information about themselves and their \u2018friends\u2019).<\/p>\n

How do the pre-set emoticon\/emotion combinations fit into this? Up until now, negative affect was something Facebook wanted to keep off the site\u2014not just because no one wants to log into Bummerville, but because too much negative affect would discourage sharing. Take that missing \u201cdislike\u201d button, for instance: without it, my status update that all my friends think is stupid just sits there. Maybe that one friend of mine says something snarky, but he\u2019s kind of a jerk anyway, so I don\u2019t think too much about it. If the update doesn\u2019t harvest a whole bunch of \u201clikes,\u201d I don\u2019t take it too personally; I chalk it up to Facebook\u2019s mysterious algorithms, perhaps, or figure I need to try something different next time. The silence is ambiguous: it might be that no one thinks I\u2019m funny (or clever, or smart), but it might also be that no one heard me speak\u2014so I provide more free labor<\/a> by trying again. Even if I\u2019m still not funny or clever or smart, Facebook rewards me for providing more content by showing my status update to more people, upping the chance someone<\/i> will say something<\/i> in response. But introduce a \u201cdislike\u201d button, and suddenly the ambiguity disappears. I made a post, and now it\u2019s clear: my friends DISLIKE it. I\u2019ve done something wrong. I\u2019ve said something stupid, or committed a faux pas<\/i>; I\u2019ve lost face, and this time, I know it. My instinct is not to post again, but to retreat from the site until my embarrassment passes and I work up the courage to say something else. In my shame, I fail to be a good data serf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"feeling-meh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The absence of negative affect, however, creates a huge hole in Facebook\u2019s giant data collection. We all know life-as-lived isn\u2019t an endless stream of \u201cLikes,\u201d LOLs, happy families, awesome parties, and flattering pictures, so clearly there\u2019s a lot that Facebook isn\u2019t capturing about how people actually live. Introducing \u201cFacebook Home\u201d (aka, that thoroughly “meh” Facebook phone<\/a>) is one new way Facebook is trying to get at all the parts of life it\u2019s missing; introducing the emoticon \u201cfeeling\u201d statuses is another. The preset emoticon\/emotion combinations bring negative affect into the site in a way that\u2019s far safer than a \u201cdislike\u201d button: when I \u201cdislike\u201d a post, my friend feels bad and doesn\u2019t want to post for a while. When I click \u201cfeeling sad,\u201d however, it prompts my friends to interact with me to cheer me up\u2014and interaction is what keeps Facebook running. More interaction means more information. The emoticon statuses, therefore, are actually kind of clever: they take my previously threatening negative affect and repackage it both as more information about me and<\/i> as a way to fuel the free-labor fires of Facebook\u2019s sharing engine.<\/p>\n

But why does the missing affect matter? Surely all kinds of data are still slipping through Facebook\u2019s sneaky like-button rhizomes; why prioritize trying to capture feelings? It\u2019s not just that the idea of tracking feelings<\/a> is gaining cultural momentum: emotions are the next frontier of targeted marketing. From its beginning, the advertising and marketing industries have known that appealing to people\u2019s emotions generates far more product sales<\/a> than does appealing to their (imagined) rational-actor-selves; one of the biggest trends in present-day marketing seeks to not just to sell products, but to foster emotional relationships with brands<\/a>. Consider this alongside the fact that digital data mining makes possible not just targeted advertising but micro-targeted advertising<\/a>, and there you have it: Facebook wants personal, emotional information because personal, emotional data is the future of marketing and advertising. And right now, getting that kind of information is really hard: automated sentiment analysis fails<\/a>. We speak in slang and in code, even when we\u2019re speaking ways our peers readily understand; we use irony and sarcasm, which amuses our friends but confounds computers. And that\u2019s just when we\u2019re speaking openly; don\u2019t forget that we also sometimes \u201cvaguebook\u201d and speak in ways that are meant to confuse most people as well<\/a> [pdf]. Emoticon status updates\u2014and more importantly, the standardized code behind them\u2014spell our feelings out in ways even a computer can read. Just like those \u201cClose Friends\u201d and \u201cFamily\u201d lists, the emoticon status updates pre-process your data into nice, easily digestible chunks<\/a> for Facebook\u2019s algorithms.<\/p>\n

\"Visual<\/a>
Visual self-expression, Snapchat style.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Of course, Facebook says it presently has no plans<\/a> to put emotional data into its \u201csocial graph,\u201d but there\u2019s a reason that\u2019s what so many of us thought of first, right? If Facebook was merely to offer \u201ca new, more visual way<\/a>\u201d to express ourselves, they\u2019d have done something like poach Snapchat\u2019s (awesomely ridiculous) MS Paint-like feature. Emoticon status updates aren\u2019t about self-expression; they\u2019re about provision of information. They create a safe, quarantined space for Facebook to corral the negative affect it so desperately wants to access\u2014because it\u2019s not feeling awesome and well-liked that drives people to buy products, it\u2019s feeling anxious, inadequate, lonely, deprived, and afraid. I loathe the phrase, but no one has ever engaged in \u201cretail therapy\u201d to combat his or her unbearable optimism (dislike!). I\u2019m now taking bets on how long it\u2019ll take before I post that I\u2019m \u201cfeeling sad\u201d today, see ads for ice cream and Prozac tomorrow, and see ads for weight loss products and dating services next week. (Though as an unmarried woman over 30, this is pretty much what I see anyway when I accidentally encounter Facebook ads\u2014dislike, dislike, dislike!)<\/p>\n

But will people actually use these emoticon status updates (other than for database vandalism, which I fully intend to engage in as soon as I have the opportunity)? The early indicators point to \u201cyes.\u201d Giving people a safe, pre-set option to share negative emotions may serve as \u201ctacit permission<\/a>\u201d to express emotions that weren\u2019t \u2018Facebook appropriate\u2019 before; some users may also feel less vulnerable in clicking on a preset \u201csad\u201d option than they would in typing out the words \u201cI\u2019m feeling sad.\u201d (Our digital words are part of us<\/a>, after all; perhaps choosing someone else\u2019s pictures and words could feel more safe, and less like \u201cus\u201d?)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m personally most interested in seeing if this feature changes the gendering of Facebook as a platform<\/a>, or whether man-identified and woman-identified users might end up using this feature differently (since men, on the whole, aren\u2019t socialized to be as \u201cshare-y\u201d as women are). Might the emoticon status update feature enable some men to start experimenting with being more expressive about their emotions? Could this be Facebook\u2019s big gender justice moment, in which it starts to take on some of the ways existing gendered norms harm men as well as women? \u00a0Um\u2026I doubt it. Given that \u2018Facebook feminism<\/a>\u2019 can\u2019t wrap its head around challenging the gendered norms that oppress women, I\u2019m skeptical that it\u2019s even managed to grok the symbolic violence that our culture perpetrates on men and boys when it teaches them about feelings. If there are any gender-based aims on Facebook\u2019s end at all, they\u2019re likely commerce-related: while a common belief is that women do more buying<\/a>, it\u2019s also true that men still have more income<\/a>. Tapping more directly into men\u2019s emotions could be a boon for advertisers, especially if those men are either privileged and single (read: high levels of discretionary income) or less practiced with emotional self-awareness (read: easier targets)\u2014or, even better, both things at once.<\/p>\n

\"feeling-safe3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In closing: yeah, emoticons can be fun. My friends and I have done some ridiculous<\/a> things<\/a> with the emoji on our phones, and I loved the weird bouncing ovoid creatures<\/a> that I had on my LiveJournal. But cute (or annoying) as the new Facebook emoticons might be, they aren\u2019t retro-LiveJournal in spirit. This status update feature isn\u2019t really about being more visually expressive and, while determined users can still use the feature creatively, it doesn\u2019t afford much opportunity for creative self-expression. Instead, Facebook emoticon status updates are about incentivizing you to provide more information and to provoke more interaction. They\u2019re about sanitizing and domesticating your bad mood, your inescapable ennui, and your existential depression into something that can be yoked to the gears of a new Social advertising machine.<\/p>\n

But hey: that\u2019s Silicon Valley, right? Facebook can give you emoticons, and encourage you to use them in ways it would like, but you don\u2019t have to play along. You can play by your own rules (see above, repeatedly), or simply refuse to play at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"feeling-irritated\"<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE: I\u2019m not cool enough to have the emoticon status updates yet, so special thanks to Nathan Jurgenson for making me some funny examples to use in this post. I\u2019m feeling pretty amused about them, myself.<\/p>\n

Whitney Erin Boesel (@phenatypical<\/a>) is on Twitter, where she generally does not use emoji. She still wishes she had a weird ovoid emoticon creature for a pet, though.\u00a0\"hungry2\"<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

[i]<\/a> Or Xanga, if you prefer\u2014but I was on LiveJournal, so that\u2019s what I know and am going to focus on here.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[ii]<\/a> The line between \u201cyourself\u201d and \u201cother people\u201d is obviously a blurry one: we\u2019re social creatures, after all. We do things with each other, we talk to each other, we think about each other, and we cause each other to feel things. At what point does \u201cme talking about my own experiences\u201d start to end, and \u201cme talking about what you said or did\u201d start to begin? My LiveJournal circles never came to any particular consensus about this, but we were all aware that the boundary existed (wherever it was)\u2014and it was one around which we tread delicately, primarily with careful words and judicious use of the \u201ccustom\u201d privacy setting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven\u2019t yet noticed (you\u2019ve probably noticed), Facebook likes to appropriate features from competing apps and platforms. You can credit the demise of the old \u201c[Name] is\u2026\u201d status update prompt, for instance, to the rise of Twitter. You may also recognize the \u201cshare\u201d feature on your friends\u2019 status updates from Tumblr; the place check-ins […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1875,"featured_media":15229,"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":[9967,892],"tags":[750,19900,16136,677,942,19882,19883,18542,55,19899,271,19901],"class_list":["post-15199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-essay","tag-advertising","tag-emoji","tag-emoticons","tag-emotions","tag-facebook","tag-feelings","tag-feels","tag-free-labor","tag-gender","tag-livejournal","tag-marketing","tag-status-updates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/files\/2013\/04\/feeling-dirty2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199","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=15199"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15266,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15199\/revisions\/15266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}