What I found especially interesting in the blog posts for this week was the issue of trust that most of us, I think, automatically feel when introduced to a life narrative of any kind, including Facebook. This trust may be forfeited if the viewer spots inconsistencies or implausibility, but most of us begin with a pretty untarnished view of the author.
Particularly with social media we can be quick to believe others’ lives are just be that much better than our own, for as Rosie Pierce points out, many users try to make themselves look “happier and more successful than [they are] in reality”. This unrealistically ideal representation of life is much like unrealistic representations of models in ads that have led to poor body images, particularly among youth. This point is supported by Jane Shi’s cited article on how depression in youth may worsen with use of social media. If one constantly compares oneself to others on a network that encourages displaying one’s accomplishments and not one’s faults, the experience can definitely make someone feel inadequate.
Is this trust inherent to the genre of life narratives and autobiographies? Is the reader betrayed if the writer doesn’t abide by that trust that seems to be a social expectation?
A good example of this trust is in Vivian Wan’s discussion of Humans of New York. She says that while she respects people’s right to privacy, she can be hesitant to believe posts that lack names, for they could be orchestrated to promote the particular Westernized ideology Wan argues these bloggers are promoting.
One may also assume, then, that names and photos inspire more trust in a reader, whether this is logical or not. While Facebook in particular allows fake photos and names, these attributes gives us an illusion of identity, and therefore we begin to build a bond with the writer, artificial or otherwise.
Proof this may be inherent to the genre of autobiographies, and not just Facebook, is in Sam Cohn-Coisineau’s post on Carlos Casteneda. Cohn-Coisineau points out many of these accounts are most likely untrue, but for a long while his books were “universally praised” because they were read as anthropological accounts. Cohn-Coisineau also points out there was a lively market for such books at the time, as modern readers developed a “exoticized fascination with Indigenous cultures”, so the books were serving a purpose to an avid audience. By taking on the language of an anthropological text, did Casteneda betray his readers’ trust? How does this compare to Facebook?
Lying by omission is similarly discussed by Hugo Liu, pointing out people are less likely to share negative but significant life events on social media despite their importance, thus creating, essentially, a different identity of a person without this struggle. How can you claim to be the same person as that on your Facebook account when there are no photos of your serious conversations with you family, your moments you feel most alone, or any of your struggles? We take it for granted life narratives are biased, but tools like Facebook now allow ‘white lies’ and embellishment of stories to be used even more often. Do we need to be more wary as readers? Or is it really no worse now than the diaries and propaganda we study in history, that were also trusted accounts at the time?