A while ago I wrote about consumption and moving beyond post-modernism. In it I discussed how our new e-age is essentially an extension of post-modernism and that the projection of ourselves on social-networking utilities is a hypereality representative of this extension. As a reminder:
Hyperreality is closely related to the concept of the simulacrum: a copy or image without reference to an original. In postmodernism, hyperreality is the result of the technological mediation of experience, where what passes for reality is a network of images and signs without an external referent, such that what is represented is representation itself.
In a sense, what people project about themselves is supposed to represent their whole. Fortunately, a profile can only display so much and fails in this attempted representation. (I say fortunately, because think of how dull of a world it would be if an entire person were able to be represented by a web page!)
Today in the New York Times science section John Tierny wrote about how consumption of high-class, luxury goods by individuals of wealth is partly an evolutionarily competitive transmission:
Harvard diplomas and iPhones send the same kind of signal as the ornate tail of a peacock. Sometimes the message is as simple as “I’ve got resources to burn,” the classic conspicuous waste demonstrated by the energy expended to lift a peacock’s tail or the fuel guzzled by a Hummer. But brand-name products aren’t just about flaunting transient wealth. The audience for our signals — prospective mates, friends, rivals — care more about the permanent traits measured in tests of intelligence and personality, as Dr. Miller explains in his new book, “Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior.”
This man looks handsome in his gucci suit, but does that tell you anything about his personality?
What he concludes is that nobody in that audience for our signals (prospective mates, friends, etc.) actually care about these consumer objects, asking the reader if they can remember what their colleague or friend wore yesterday. What actually matters are the qualities of personality that can only be discovered over time (even if some things are clear in a simple, introductory conversation).
In this sense, the creation of these profiles on facebook matter very little when people actually take into account who they want to be friends or bff’s with. So why do we make them? Do we really create them out out of the “narcissistic fantasy that everyone else cares about what we [are],” what we did last night or dreamed*? The article leaves us as doomed to our evolutionary baggage and recommends the reader do a cost-benefit analysis of happiness gained vs. money spent on our new Louis-Vuitton bag. In essence he tells us to use our brain.
I find the article interesting because the professor interviewed, Dr. Geoffrey Miller, explicitly tells us that transient objects like our hyper-realistic profiles, or Rolex watches are unimportant in the decisions people make about whether to be your friend or not. Ultimately you can conclude that no amount of wealth can buy you social competence, intelligence even if it can buy you the presidency.