Jonathan Franzen: Read Some Erving Goffman. Please!

Jonathan Franzen’s NY Times Op-Ed, “Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts,” is one of the most e-mailed articles and is also one of the most shared articles on my Twitter and Facebook feeds. And it hurts.

Let’s start here:

I may be overstating the case, a little bit. Very probably, you’re sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds.

Yes. Next?

My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love.

Wait. What? Why is technology narcissistic? Although he starts out talking about his “sexy” BlackBerry Bold, he really means Facebook. One is a piece of hardware, the other a piece of social software accessed via that device. If, for the time being, we assume that Facebook is narcissistic, does that mean that all technology is narcissistic? What is narcissistic about a telephone, a device which allows you to speak to other people? Sure, your conversations may be about yourself, but that’s because you’re narcissistic, not because your telephone is.

But let’s give Franzen the benefit of the doubt. He isn’t making a deterministic argument, but a softer argument about how technology subtly influences us. The nub of his arguments seems to be that the technology’s sexiness facilitates narcissism.

Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren’t people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us.

There is some truth to the claim that all consumer products are designed to reflect well on their owners. At least the designers of those products want us to make that connection, and it is important to some people, but I’ve never been convinced that it is as widespread a connection as designers and advertisers would like us to believe. I think the opposite is true as well: people tend to reflect themselves back on whatever technology they happen to own. Still, let’s give this one to Franzen. But again he slips from the sexiness of the phone to the sexiness of the Facebook interface… (Does anyone actually think the Facebook GUI is sexy?).

Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren’t people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us.

It’s all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.

Speak for yourself kiddo. I friend people on Facebook because they are my students, colleagues, research collaborators, high school classmates, etc. In other words, for a whole lot of varied reasons. I certainly don’t think of it as a private hall of flattering mirrors. But OK, I like it when people “like” my photos, glib comments, and the links I share. I get my little shot of dopamine. Sure. But so do I when someone gives me encouragement at work, or says something especially nice on a student evaluation form. If Facebook is any different it is because I get to give and receive such encouragement to a much wider social network than those I encounter daily at work. The very opposite of narcissism.

But I suspect that most people e-mailing, liking, and tweeting the article (oh, the irony) do so because of the next section:

The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

Suddenly there’s a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.

OK. Hold on a second. Are you saying that being phony is purely a product of the “techno-consumerist order”? Read some Erving Goffman. Please! Everyday life is full of various degrees of self-presentation. This is true of all societies, living under all levels of technological development. Tell me that being “cool, attractive, in-control” wasn’t important for pre-internet Balinese! Does that mean that they were incapable of love? How about writing letters, or (dare I say it?) novels? How is carrying around a Franzen paperback any less a part of the techno-consumerist order?

But all this isn’t what pissed me off. No. What really pissed me off was the last bit. The bit about birdwatching.

And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.

Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved.

Well, you know what? When you keep lists of birds you are using technology. Yes, keeping lists is a type of technology – one of the oldest in fact. But we’ve moved beyond that. Here’s a small list of some current technologies which might help you with your birdwatching. And you know what else? These technologies might even help the birds.

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This article was originally published on Savage Minds
Photo Credits: Flickr CC scatterkeir