Spending hours in front of my computer and constantly attached to my phone, my (rather inquisitive) mind has never before been so littered with various divergences, distractions and imaginary social instances.These start innocently enough – looking at a friends Wall on Facebook, back-tracking their posts to other friends, then looking at their friends, taking a glimpse at tagged photos… And uh-oh is it the afternoon already?
At my defence I point to the possibilities offered by the capability of technology that afford such social rational. In diong so my argument is based on an awareness that not only are my friends doing the same , but also that they will also make their judgements and how you react and/or are aware of such activities reflects and affects your mood and, ultimately, your relationships.
Nevertheless, this particular social state is addictive. I am proud to state that I have never intruded where the boundaries of public decency and good grace of friendship respect would not allow. As such (thank goodness) I have never unearthered the unexpected: a previously unknown dependency on drugs, internet porn, gambling, or some other wayward and socially disapproved activity of those in my network(s). BUT I shall confess, that this type of social snooping has taken over parts of my everyday life and increasingly take up my creative energies, have infiltratrated my sleep and take over my time.
Now it is difficult to try and pry oneself away from such veillance. But should one?...
Putting these thoughts together I am already nose-deep into Sam Gosling’s psychological take on ‘other people’s stuff’. His notion of the Snoop celebrates what your ‘stuff’ says about you. In doing so, Gosling interprets from what people leave in their bathroom, to how they arrange their desk and order their bedroom to build up an interpretative picture of the inner self. Such elements of daily life are suggestive not only of elements of our character, but now sat alongside the constant streams of social information from SNSs can reveal our most personal qualities.
It strikes me that such perceptions fall into three categories.
1. The ‘fair game’ category: Where going through others social information is completely acceptable. Such feeds are broadcast as direct elements of your SNS newsfeed and make it permissible (and pleasing) to check out the related image uploads, wall posts etc.
2. The ‘sneaky game’ category: For those occasions when you have been following the fair game state of play, but find yourself clicking through to target specific information and/or people in other networks - including those whom you may not know. But this is not considered ‘a big deal’ since you share a friend in common right?… ummm…
3. Finally the red alert, red alert, red alert! ‘devious game’ category: Devious because you have had to employ time and thought into hacking into a private account. The main dividing line being the completely illegal and totally shameful set of actions that you now employ to turn a snoop into a potential scoop. I am pleased to say I have never ever (nor would I) do this and so can happily dismiss this level of snoopage!
But why do we follow such actions? A good friend of mine has justified her ‘devious game’ and red alert! actions as they took place during an 'uncontrollable set of circumstances' that conspired during a break up. Upon receiving a ‘mysterious text’, which contained the message: ‘do you know where ***** is tonight?’ Quite naturally she wanted to uncover some answers…
Following the sneaky game play I have uncovered some elements of my own social snippets about friends, boyfriends and acquaintances - mostly when aided by a (vain) curiousity to know what exes of past boyfriends have been like, what groups someone belongs to, the kinds of images they upload and their friends tag etc. and then interpreting what this says about them...
However, there comes (before) the red alert! point when I (and so should you) feel the need to stop! and I recognise that enough is enough is enough. Crossing over to the dark side you run risk of invading (whether intentionally or not) into the lives of others and also making yourself look less than trustworthy and dishonest in the process.
In actuality the opportunity to snoop is a magnificent social divergence. Even so the clicking through of that tagged photo can quickly lead to a red alert situation! The result? Our actions have to be contextualised in measured proportions - so only snoop as far as you would want your friends to in your life…
