Paper 2, Question 3: Grindr and/as a Networked Public

In her essay “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites,” Danah Boyd conceptualizes the online social network as special kind of public space, mediated in several ways by the properties of the technology it arises from. For Boyd, the term public is not meant as a reference to the universal or the general interest (e.g. public policy), but rather as a collection of individuals who have “a claim to the collective interest.” (7) In traditional public spaces (I call these physical publics), such as the town plaza, the gaze of the viewer – and therefore her access to information about others - is fixed in time and space. The networked public, on the other hand, subverts these formalities of time and space via a few important properties. These include replicability (there is no way to separate the original from the copy), invisible audiences (there is no way to ascertain who it watching or what they see), persistence (the lifetime of information is extended, perhaps indefinitely), and searchability (it becomes easy to find or access one’s digital body in space).

As in a physical public, the networked public is a space for socialization into society, as well as the construction and performance of identity. The social network seemingly allows the user more control over this process, as she can choose specifically what she wants to put forward for public display, through the process of literally writing herself into being. Yet, online profiles (digital bodies) are fragments of oneself and can therefore be more open to misinterpretation than physical bodies in public space. Due to the searchability of profiles and the presence of invisible audiences, meanwhile, social networks also alter the traditional relationship between what is private and what is public. In online space, privacy is no longer about being isolated or separated from others in a physical sense, but is rather the perception of privacy through the illusion of “security through obscurity” (Boyd, 15).

I contend that the case of Grindr, the popular iPhone application for gay males, presents an interesting complement to Boyd’s conceptualization of space. Grindr is a GPS-enabled social network service, which one commentator claims “allows gay men who want to have anonymous sex with strangers to find sexually willing partners within near geographic proximity.” (Dreher, 1) My analysis will focus on several areas in which Grindr is in conversation with Boyd, notably around the question of why social life occurs there (as in, on the social network site), the implied connection between online and offline space, and the notion of privacy online as ‘security through obscurity’.

Toward the end of her essay, Boyd dwells on why she believes teen social life now occurs there, as in on MySpace, rather than in physical publics. This is important for her conceptualization of space because by demonstrating the negative aspects of the spaces teens are trying to escape from in going on MySpace, Boyd is able to put the two types of spaces in conversation with one another. In the case of MySpace, Boyd contends that teens use the site because they are otherwise stuck in “adult-regulated physical spaces” (21), having infrequent access to physical publics (e.g., due to lack of transportation) where teens can set their own norms. Meanwhile, MySpace affords teens the opportunity “to participate in unregulated publics while located in adult-regulated physical spaces such as homes and schools.” (21) Grindr represents the actualization of a similar desire to simultaneously participate in and escape from the traditional norms and regulations of the dominant social paradigm (in this case heterosexual-governed society). Specifically, in using Grindr, gay men have a means to maintain full adherence to the heterosexual social norms that have oppressed them, while also gaining access to a sub-culture or a sub-space apart from these norms.

Next, Boyd contends that identity formation and performance in online space is contrained by what has already been established offline, since one’s imagined audience on MySpace is essentially the same as her real-life peers. This has important implications for online behavior and identity performance, for “even though teens theoretically have the ability to behave differently online, the social hierarchies that regulate 'coolness' offline are also present online.” (13) In Grindr, one’s imagined audience is not so much his real-life peers as they are strangers who are physically close by and who the user expects or hopes to encounter offline. Interestingly, as a mobile application, Grindr actually encourages the user to let his online self guide or inform his experience of physical space. In describing his use of Grindr, for instance, Clark Harding writes, “the app takes a classic urban pastime - people watching - and makes it digital, not to mention completely addictive. It's impossible to resist the urge to constantly pull it out and look at who's in your immediate area, even if you're not looking for a hookup.” In this way, no longer do offline interactions just inform what happens online, but now what happens online can alter offline behavior and offline identity performance.

Finally, as I briefly noted earlier, Boyd argues that social network sites reconceptualize notions of privacy. Online privacy is constructed as “security through obscurity” (15), whereas offline privacy is linked to physical separation or being closed off from others. I believe that Grindr exemplifies Boyd’s concept, perhaps in the extreme. Gay men have historically been hesitant of overtly representing their sexual orientation in public for fear of potential physical or emotional aggression, and so it is bizarre that so many would brazenly display their sexual orientation and exact GPS-based location on a networked public. Since gay men believe that Grindr is somehow hidden from heterosexual society, though, they can feel security in their perceived obscurity. Meanwhile, because users can ‘block’ other users from seeing them and perceive a sense of security in doing so, they are often willing to post very incriminating information, such as promiscuous photos and descriptions of their sexual whims. In fact, a website was launched solely to catalogue these incriminating postings (the now-defunct guysiblockedongrindr.tumblr.com), which should call special attention to the real lack of privacy on the site.

All told, Grindr both exemplifies and nuances Boyd’s conceptualization of online space, and poses interesting questions about online and offline identity performance and what constitutes privacy online.

Works Cited:

Boyd, D. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dreher, R. (2010) "Grindr and the problem of technology." Belief Net (Blog), http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/02/grindr-and-the-problem-of-technology.html

Harding, C. (2010) "Sex in the time of GPS." The Daily Beast (Blog), http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-01/sex-in-the-time-of-gps/

Passage from Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control"

In the disciplinary societies one was always starting again (from school to the barracks, from the barracks to the factory), while in the societies of control one is never finished with anything – the corporation, the educational system, the armed services being metastable states coexisting in one and the same modulation, like a universal system of deformation. In The Trial, Kafka, who had already placed himself at the pivotal point between two types of social formation, described the most fearsome of juridical forms. The apparent acquittal of the disciplinary societies (between two incarcerations); and the limitless postponements of the societies of control (in continuous variation) are two very different modes of juridical life, and if our law is hesitant, itself in crisis, it’s because we are leaving one in order to enter the other. The disciplinary societies have two poles: the signature that designates the individual, and the number of administrative numeration that indicates his or her position within a mass. This is because the disciplines never saw any incompatibility between these two, and because at the same time power individualizes and masses together, that is, constitutes those over whom it exercises power into a body and molds the individuality of each member of that body. (Foucault saw the origin of this double charge in the pastoral power of the priest – the flock and each of its animals – but civil power moves in turn and by other means to make itself lay “priest.”). In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand the disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance). The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals,” and masses, samples, data, markets, or “banks.” Perhaps it is money that expresses the distinction between the two societies best, since discipline always referred back to minted money that locks gold in as numerical standard, while control relates to floating rates of exchange, modulated according to a rate established by a set of standard currencies. The old monetary mole is the animal of the spaces of enclosure, but the serpent is that of the societies of control. We have passed from one animal to the other, from the mole to the serpent, in the system under which we live, but also in our manner of living and in our relations with others. The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network. Everywhere surfing has already replaced the older sports.

Introduction: Codes, Lenses, and Starring Deleuze's "Postscript"

In reading Barthes’ methodology for ‘starring’ a text, I was immediately drawn to the footnote. Footnotes are typically seen as explanatory or referencing notes included by the author at the bottom or the end of a text. They are simultaneously part of the text and subservient to the text, often viewed as outside of or apart from the formal text itself. In this way, footnotes can be read as digressions from the text, which Barthes notes as being ‘a form ill-accomodated by the discourse of knowledge’ (13). While footnotes are a form of digression, they’re an authoritarian form of digression. Footnotes expand and disperse meaning in a text, but this expansion is still carefully controlled by the text’s author. Since starring a text is akin to a “systematic use of digression”, I will be playing with footnoting as a method of textual analysis in starring Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control.”

Footnotes have an interesting relationship to hypertext. The use of links and images in hypertext is somewhat analogous to the use of footnotes in print. Links and images can give voice to dissenting opinions, document or reference supporting material, and provide additional explanation beyond the master text. In this way, links and images provide a space for expanding or digressing from the single narrative or the coherent textual unit. My footnotes, then, will be in the form of hypertextual links and I will be experimenting with what happens to footnotes when they go online. Look out for links within links, ‘broken’ links, incomprehensible links, and other forms of digression or decomposition of the text. In this way, I will be exploring Barthes’ notion that “the one text is not an (inductive) access to a Model, but entrance into a network with a thousand entrances.” (12)

Barthes’ codes are more akin to ‘lenses’ (Barthes prefers the term ‘voices’) available for viewing a text than the kind of formal or rule-based method of analysis the term implies. In fact, Barthes refers to his codes as a convergence of interweaving voices (21) and not “the sense of a list, a paradigm that must be reconstituted.” (20) In my analysis of “Postscript on the Societies of Control”, I will draw from a number of ‘lenses’ for analysis, each of which has a relationship to the footnote. These lenses include:

- Hermeneutic (e.g.) – This lens is identical to Barthes' Hermeneutic code. It references unexplained or mysterious information in the text and leads to the articulation of a question and search for an answer. Such a lens corresponds to the traditional purpose of a footnote in providing answers to unexplained information.
- Connotation/Denotation (e.g.,e.g.) – This lens is related to Barthes' Semantic code. Here I will explore the relationship between connoted and denoted meanings throughout the text. Footnotes traditionally provide insight into the denotation and etymology of words, but not their connotations.
- Memory/Forgetting (e.g.) – Barthes contends that there is a close relationship between reading and forgetting. He describes, "forgetting meanings is not a matter for excuses, an unfortunate defect in performance; it is an affirmative value, a way of asserting the irresponsibility of the text, the pluralism of systems" (11). The footnote is often traditionally employed to overcome the transgression of forgetting and ensure the reader ascribes to the author's intended meaning. Here, I assess what the reader might be expected to remember/forget in a given part of the text and how that affects the meaning he/she might ascribe.
- Truth/Opinion (e.g.) – This lens is a spin on Barthes' Cultural code. Here I look at what’s presented as ‘true’ and assess whether, in what ways, and to what extent the assertion is supportable. This is a play on the footnote's referencing function, in which the author provides additional support or documentation for what he/she posits as 'true'.