My Big Head: Reading Face in Light of Cyber Narcissism
Two Confessions
- Until recently, I had no idea that a “face book” is a thing. Like a physical thing. Like a book with faces in it that faceless people compile to keep track of you or to look at because they have no face. And I have a hunch that I’m not the only faced-individual who blindly assumes the infamous cyber network is that original compilation.
- Whenever I open up my laptop, I see a shiny reflection of my face in the black screen before it lights up with an artistic photo that I stole from Pinterest and set as my desktop background. Between the time of unfolding the screen and waiting for it to light up, I somehow always have time to adjust it to alter my reflection ever so slightly. Word to the wise and/or vain: tilting your laptop screen towards you makes your eyes look bigger and your neck look narrower. It’s magical and I call it the Bighead Aesthetic.
Based on my own experiences with Facebook and critical theory, I have come to view online social networking as an addictive and stimulating performance of everyday life. I am confident that my cyber experiences offer a somewhat diverse and stratified look at Facebook, based on the fact that I, like many popular tweens these days, have thousands of friends. While I cannot say I know half of them, I have often spent a good thirty minutes of my day trying to impress them all choosing a profile picture that makes my face look doe-eyed and effortless. I usually spend the next thirty minutes browsing my other profile photos, waiting for someone to make a flirty comment on the new pic. OMG you’re gorgeous, girl! Thank you, I know.
In fact, I know my cyber self quite well. I might go so far to compare my Facebook habits with Foucault’s technology of the self, Goffman’s method of saving face, and Bourdieu’s logic of practice. Facebook is a performance with guaranteed spectators. If none of my 1500 intimate acquaintances appreciate my sexy face, I alone can still witness my own photoshopped glory. In this essay I intend to explore the phenomena of physical face in virtual space, the changing dynamics of the audience feedback loop in a technological era, and the ways in which Facebook creates a textual interface for the discourse of quotidian performance.
