Periodically, I like to grind my anti-Facebook axe, but the two new ads for Facebook’s smartphone for dummies practically skewer themselves.
The first, called “Launch Day”, stars Zuckerberg himself, as well as a rogue “employee” who’d rather surf his new Facebook phone than pay attention to the meeting. Hilarity ensues, I guess, as the employee’s friends’ updates materialize in the office.
The second is “Dinner”, which, while similar in concept to “Launch Day”, egregiously embodies the irony of the contemporary social experience as championed by Facebook. Why participate at the dinner table with your boring family, a situation you are physically living, right there, in the moment, when you can surf photos of your friend’s snowball fight, to which you were not invited?
The marketing for Home underlines the phone’s focus on relationships and the social experience, but nowhere is Facebook’s stilted understanding of sociability more on display than here. The social experience, as defined by Zuckerberg & co., is a mediatized one. If it doesn’t happen through the site, and through a screen, it’s probably not interesting, and engagement needs only to be as permanent as the scroll of a mouse wheel or the flick of a finger. When you’re done chatting with a friend on Facebook Home, you literally throw their face away, as Zuckerberg demonstrated at the Facebook Home launch event.
It’s not an unfair statement to say that the denizens of Silicon Valley are not among the world’s most socially sensitive or adept. Zuckerberg’s own social awkwardness has been well documented, in print and in film. In fact, over the last few decades, the mating habits of computer science’s best and brightest has led to an explosion of children with autism and Asperger’s born within driving distance of some of the world’s most famous tech companies. In other words, this group’s understanding of the ideal social experience may not be the most empathetic or socially sensitive, as these ads seem to underline. In fact, study after study shows that the form of social interaction espoused by Facebook regularly results in increased unhappiness.
All this to say that maybe, as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently requested, it’s time to put the phone down and experience the world directly, with the full HDR and estimated 576 megapixels of the human eye. Who knows? Maybe if you actually listen to crazy cat lady Aunt Clara at the dinner table, you might end up with something funny to post to Facebook… later.
