{{hugs}}

I had no concerns but I think you could hardly have been more explicit in your clarification for those who needed it.

It was painful to watch quite how misinterpreted that piece was. Despite all the signalling and flag-waving that went on. Goes to show that despite all the context that is available just one mouse click away, the internet still deals in soundbites. Hooray for the web!

You'll be pleased to hear that the front page of Metro, the London freesheet, was on MySpace being rammed full of paedophiles.

I was astounded at the reaction to the original, with so many people taking it out of context. I even emailed the BBC about their poor coverage, so I'm glad they corrected it. I was quite comfortable with the first essay and the second rounds it out, so thanks.

danah, many, many {{hugs}} for sharing your thoughts, thoughtfulness and insights on these (among many other) issues.

The various reactions have been tremendously instructive to watch: the remarkable digital illiteracy among people who cannot read the semantics of "blog"; the hegemony of positivist and post-positivist framing in research (and the predominant influence of quantitative methods); and perhaps most interesting, the tacit indictment of an educational system that specifically trains people to focus on figure, and ignore contextual ground from which sense can be made (i.e., not attempting to discover context to make meaning).

I'm astonished, and not in a good way. I read the original piece & liked it quite a lot - it's well-written & thought-provoking and makes a good case, although it's more timid than I would have liked about using the word 'class'. Then I didn't think any more of it - I didn't see any of the press reaction, let alone the scary personal stuff you mention towards the end. What a weird and horrible bunch of reactions - with the emphasis on weird.

Unlike some who have commented here, I am not astonished about the response to the original essay at all.

Here are my thoughts on your response:

http://www.catmindeye.com/media/

But let me also say that I enjoy reading your ideas and research always, whether my instinct allows me to agree or not.

danah, thank you for seeing the conversation through. I enjoyed both essays and believe you've done an excellent job of capturing the bigger issues. I'm looking forward to the final results.

I'll never understand the people who feel free to comment without actually reading the source. Good luck to you.

I won't post the entire piece I wrote in response to your "clarification", but I will include the quote I started it with, from Orwell's Politics and the English Language

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

I've been able to point friends, who are teachers, at your original post. They have all had sudden insights into the choices of their own students w.r.t FB/MS.

I'm amazed at the breadth of ill-informed responses you've had.
Keep up the writing, {{hugs}}, AndrewN

I tend to have qualms about all the post-structural theory jargon (all this inscribing and re-inscribing, etc.), but I have to say that the reactions pretty much demonstrated the existence of the dynamics described in post-structuralism. Your essay became a "site" for the "re-inscription" of "hegemonic" values, through the activity of hegemonic media and subaltern and hegemonic teens and adults! Pretty amazing.

Something I don't think you addressed enough in your response is that even people who read the essay took the two lists of labels and processed as 'bad kids/good kids'. That is, many of the responses seemed to be aimed at escaping groupings the respondents might fall into because the groupings came from a perceived hegemonic voice that was assumed to be engaged in an act of inscription that would capture them and limit their freedom. For example, some of the responses came from people who felt guilty about their privileges and thus sought to bury the distinctions. Others came from people who are unaware or embarrassed that they are actually subaltern. Well, that's the very definition of re-inscription.

First, thanks for seeing this through and continuing the discussion, danah. It's too important to allow it to be drown out by less-than-helpful or -insightful criticism or attacks.

Second, comparing what has happened with "peer review" strikes me as completely silly and a little bit scary. There's no doubt that there was quite a bit of "review" but there was very little "peer." In fact, I noted that the reaction among those who may be considered peers in the traditional academic sense reacted very differently that others. For example, the reaction on the Associate of Internet Researchers' listserv was very different both in tone and content than the reaction in most other fora.

Third, I can't help but see connections with this work and Benkler's "The Wealth of Networks." That's probably because I have a very one-track mind and I am in the middle of reading it but... There are two ideas in particular that seem relevant. First, the phenomenon that you are observing seems somehow related to the arguments and evidence that Benkler raises against "Fragmentation of attention and discourse" online. We have carried our existing social constructs and built new ones online to help us make sense of the online world and the vast amount of information it contains. Second, we should not compare what is happening online with a non-existent utopia. It's perfectly natural that people integrate their offline social networks and contacts with their online activities, import them into their online environments, and continue their patterns of relationship built around shared interests, cultures, and other commonalities. (These arguments seem to be best expressed in Chapter 7 of Benkler's book, available at http://www.benkler.org/Benkler_Wealth_Of_Networks_Chapter_7.pdf).

Thanks again for continuing to share your thoughts with us, danah. It's interesting and important on many levels. The level of transparency you and other researchers are displaying is quite a shift from older models where knowledge would seem to spring forth fully formed from the foreheads of scholars. I'm sure it's hard for some people to understand but researchers and scholars are human, too.

My part of the blogosphere somehow missed the big fuss, but I finally got pointed to your article and response to responses today. For what validation from a random stranger is worth, you seem to have mostly said what, according to your responses to responses, you wanted to say. Fairly clearly.

I suspect people got drawn off-base by your rather academic style, not realizing that full-blown academic papers are much *much* MUCH more formal and fully-developed. I suspect lots of people on the Internet aren't used to reading serious research in the fuzzy-studies; I know I'm not, really, but I've seen enough to see the difference even so. Still, you said explicitly that that was NOT the formal report.

I'm a numbers fan (recognizing all the problems with their use and abuse), but even I think that this sort of qualitative study is tremendously valuable; in fact they're where many of the valuable new insights come from I think. To be adopted as true, though, people need to be motivated to find ways to actually measure these things quantitatively.

I think class in America is a tremendously important topic. One of the most important bits is that we don't have any kind of vague idea of what class *is* in America. I absolutely agree that money is very little of it, and parental class is (apart from being circular) also not definitive. I don't see how we can deal with this important topic when we don't have a clue what it is.

glad we could make you giggle: duh

Nothing original to add, just would echo Britt Raybould's sentiments.

see ... that's what you get for getting all hoity-toity with your language :-).

it never ceases to amaze me how people project their own issues on to other peoples' words.

danah, I think you have really important things to say. Controversial is not always a bad thing, as it seems to be one of the only things that makes people actually perk up. I'm sorry it got so overwhelming though.

Maybe I'm misreading Kevin's comment, but this strikes me as laughably arrogant:

Second, comparing what has happened with "peer review" strikes me as completely silly and a little bit scary. There's no doubt that there was quite a bit of "review" but there was very little "peer." In fact, I noted that the reaction among those who may be considered peers in the traditional academic sense reacted very differently that others. For example, the reaction on the Associate of Internet Researchers' listserv was very different both in tone and content than the reaction in most other fora.

{{hug}}

I enjoyed reading your original blog post. You are right - many Latino/Hispanic teens interact with family members of all ages on MySpace, and often have profiles on both Facebook and MySpace, with the majority of their family members mostly on MySpace.

The only thing I took issue with was the framing of this paragraph:

******* MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools. Teens who are really into music or in a band are also on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

In order to demarcate these two groups, let's call the first group of teens "hegemonic teens" and the second group "subaltern teens." ********

I understand what you were intending to describe and why, however to be honest my first instinctual response was to be a little offended. You identified the following categories:

"Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids"

as if they were all separate and didn't mention any overlap. Your choice to not use "most" or "many" when making this statement was also confusing. This also caught my notice:

"These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after schools."

How did you come to this conclusion? What made you say this, instead of "who plan to end up doing clerical work, credit company customer service jobs, etc?" Curiosity and a tiny bit of outrage motivates my question.

Clearly the initial requirements to join Facebook created a huge class differentiation between the two sites, and I am interested in reading more of your work as you follow migration patterns, behaviors, and conflicts. I appreciate what you are doing.

You do great work Danah, and you're an inspiration to other bloggers like myself who enjoy writing lengthy, in-depth content. {{hug}} in return.

Best,
Jay

As someone who was particularly interested in the identification of 'good kids/bad kids' in the original essay, or more accurately, the perception of the concept of 'good kids/bad kids' among teenagers depending on one's usage of a particular site, I find this comment above interesting

"Something I don't think you addressed enough in your response is that even people who read the essay took the two lists of labels and processed as 'bad kids/good kids'."

No, we didn't, or at least I didn't. It was explicitly stated:

"The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids are now going to Facebook."

"Subaltern teens who go to more mixed-class schools see Facebook as "what the good kids do" or "what the preps do." They have various labels for these hegemonic teens but they know the division, even if they don't have words for it. Likewise, in these types of schools, the hegemonic teens see MySpace as "where the bad kids go." "Good" and "bad" seem to be the dominant language used to divide hegemonic and subaltern teens in mixed-class environments."

I personally wanted to hear more about this perception because I, myself, have not seen such a distinction in my limited research and observance. (which is not to say it isn't there).

I would also like to say that I greatly appreciated the commenter who discussed the language with which the essay was written, not necessarily because I agree with everything he stated, but because it seems as though the language has become the topic of discussion rather then whether or not the premise of the essay, that we can observe class divisions through MySpace and Facebook, is actually valid. I am much more interested in hearing discourse about that topic and not whether or not certain words were correct or incorrect to use in certain circumstances.

Again, I also pose the question: Where is the Facebook Developer's Platform in all this? Where is the discussion about the increase in Facebook's user base and the observed change in the sites demographic over the last couple of months? Where is the discussion about the actual topic? Maybe it can't happen here but it should happen somewhere. That is the point right?

hey danah,
so when i read your essay a month ago, i thought duh and then i was totally puzzled by all the bruhaha. but having spent a few years studying the production of media, both new and old, i remembered that many in the press are required to write far more articles than in the past. someone who ten years ago wrote 3 pieces a week now writes six, someone who wrote one a day now writes two, etc. it's crazy. they can't read and parse or be bothered to get in touch with you under that pressure. and then there's the new media people who often feel the pressure to be first at the expense of accuracy or care. so then i thought, how ridiculous, and i hoped you weren't taking it too badly.

my only worry is that while it's totally reasonable for you to take a month to respond, and your response is great, that the vagaries of this new and old media system mean many of the people interested before have moved onto the next fireworks inducing explosion of controversy. doncha wonder if they are all addicted to the controversy and don't really care that much about the actual discussion?

but i think you did great and you should be proud of yourself. and lessons learned.

{{hugs}}

I think your original piece was really interesting but this one is bloody brilliant. Your essay was pearls before swine in relation to the media - if a source doesn't have statistics they don't know how to write it up so that they sound authoritative. Best and worst thing is that it will be forgotten in about five more minutes. Blog on. Qualitatively.

Thanks for doing what you do, the way you do it.

I blogged about you and the gathering storm on July 6 at http://trustedadvisor.com/blog/179/ , and thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated what you've written here. What came to mind was "Camille Paglia of the blogosphere," and I mean that in nothing but the best terms.

Like hers, I find your work insightful, courageous, deeply informed, edgy, and written with style and humor. But you add another secret sauce--a willingness to be personally transparent--which I find, frankly, moving. I don't want to say Paglia is cynical or jaded, but you moreso manage to keep some optimistic "innocence" (for lack of a better term) in your writing; for me, that makes for a better human connection.

Anyway, thanks. Rock on. You're doin' the lord's work, so to speak, and deserve all the good things that happen to you, and don't sweat the small crap.

I read all of both of them, so thanks for the hug dana! I find American attitudes to class fascinating- the supposedly classless society that is to outsiders like us Brits, overwhelmingly divided on class lines.

I also find it very very funnu that anyone who knows anything could consider you (of all people, being openly queer) homophobic for using the word queer! This smacks of well off white people deriding people for being racist whilst not realising their own attitudes are remarkable so...

The peer review thing is interesting; I self censor a lot online because I'm scared of having a reaction like the one you have experienced. I thought you made it pretty clear this was you working through some ideas, rather than talking 'quantitatively'. I also think, given your experience, the BBC reporting this as a 'study' was probably correct. The qualitative, deep description nature of anthropology is very hard to explain to people who don't 'get it'.

Keep writing and I'll keep reading :)

Mary - I do realize that most people are in love with the controversy instead of the truth. I also realize that the folks who didn't read the first essay would never read this one. But I needed to put this out there and clarify, mostly for those who keep emailing me with questions about it (press and otherwise). I'd rather clarify in public than a bazillion times over in private, even if few will read it in public. But I'm under no illusion that those who criticized me most heartlessly will read this. The section on race and sexuality was more to make those who were unaware of that discussion aware (connected to the "do you really wanna be public?" question of peer review) than to address the trolls who will never read that far.

I support danah's general web presence and writing, but the original essay seemed to be dividing kids into "smart/upperclass/tasteful" and "dumb/lowerclass/blingbling"

As a someone who grew up with great grades and a love of art, books, and nature (that I got from my PARENTS) but no money (family illness of long duration), those overly simplistic divisions compound the pain and frustration that I felt and still feel.

I went through a long, hard struggle to become educated and published, and to some extent that is still with me.

It seems the internet these days is perpetuating and making worse the whole "well of course if you're smart you're RICH" assumption.

To give danah credit, I think she is actually opposed to that assumption, but it didn't seem that way in her original essay.

As Cat Mind's Eye said in her own blog, people are reacting negatively to that essay because nobody likes being stuck in a box.

i felt from the beginning that these responses were based on your postings title, more than its contents.

not to mention those that got all upset about this seemed to one) be high tech facebook members, and two) acted as if they were upset because your article was saying they were better(which it wasn't). i belong to myspace and enjoy hacking around with its design, style sheets, and i just find it more 'fun'. facebook just bores me.

i actually fully agree with your conclusions, they've seemed obvious to me ever since facebook opened to the public. and despite my fitting into both 'classes', my life experiences def leave me feeling more comfortable with those that hang out on facebook. not to mention my issues with facebook calling their iframe thing an 'api'. *suppresses computer science rant*.

i've been want to say that i agree fully with your observations from an academic level as well as on an emotional &experience level. of course i wanted to read your complete, well more complete, paper before agreeing with something you may not have intended.

the most disgusting part of this entire thing is that its been used, its seems, by mostly 'self serving' facebook members as a psuedo-self-rightous indignation. its been as if those who where most up in arms over your original posting where doing so as a way of saying: "see we are better than you. but we aren't happy about." its been truly laughable.

your paper, and even your earlier posting, seems to me to just show society's effect on internet culture and activities. and the knee-jerk reactions, at most, only seemed to cement your observations.

enough babbling from me. but lastly, wonderful paper. &huge *hugs*, sorry you had to be such a target for your post. but thank you for it nonetheless and i'm glad to have read your current paper.

*hugs* &no offense but my comments here will be reflected on my blog soon. take care. *is still reading*

BTW, you got cited in the Economist: http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9507260 - not bad for a blog essay.

Hi. I guess you should count me in the "duh" camp. I hadn't really thought about this in detail, but I've certainly felt it in my gut. I'm approaching my 20 year reunion, so I'm certainly no high school teen. I'd like to share my observations, because I think they relate closely to yours.

I started out with SixDegrees, which was a site before its time. I loved being able to link to my friends and see how my network grew. It died, and I missed it. I joined Classmates, but its pay-to-do-anything-useful model really impeded its usability. A friend who worked for Friendster invited me to join, and it was a good replacement for SixDegrees. I guess I was somewhat of a late adopter to MySpace, because lots of my friends from high school were already there. It essentially replaced my need for Classmates, and it was a lot more fun than Friendster (Friendster has since added many of the things that make MySpace interesting). After some time, MySpace became tiresome, especially all the spam. I stumbled on Facebook, and it felt different, fresh, almost Zen. Privacy was more evident (and slightly frustrating for finding friends), and the plug-in applications were a nice feature.

Facebook has become my "work" network, because a lot of people I know through my technology consulting business are there. MySpace remains the place that I "hang" with friends I've known for years. Facebook seems more serious, professional, and clam. MySpace and Friendster seem more approachable, lighthearted, and "everyman"-oriented (everyperson?) Of the two, Friendster seems to share Facebook's market, but not its feel; MySpace remains a little "seedier" or "dirtier".

Another analogy would compare a library to a video store. While many people will enjoy borrowing from each place, most people will primarily patronize one or the other. In a video store, the curtained-off area is clearly present, but that doesn't mean a library doesn't contain similar material--it's just not as visible when you walk in.

If there was one thing I'd take offense to in your article, it's the use of "good" and "bad" relating to the kids. I gather that's the term that teens used among themselves. Like you, I had feet firmly planted in both the "in" and "out" crowds at my high school. Neither group was "good" and neither was "bad". I think that many of the "good" kids actually got away with more than the "bad" kids did. It would be great if more people would realize that being different is not a bad thing, and that diversity of all types is a good thing. Evolution favors diversity, because with too much similarity the entire species could be wiped out easily.

The tone of your blog entry was fine. If anything, I seemed a little too formal for a blog entry, but coming from an academic/journalist background, it seems perfectly appropriate. The thing to remember is that it is your blog, and if people don't like it, they don't have to read it. So have fun with it. Write your own way, and don't feel you have to conform in this aspect of life any more than you do in any other aspect. :-)

The essay was a big "duh" for me, too (I was an undergraduate at the time of FB's debut). In fact, it was so confirming of my impressions that the ensuing controversy felt like an attack on my own epistemology.

I think that this is just what happens when you try to talk about class in a society without the vocabulary to do so.

Keep practicing on succinctness-- you'll be richly rewarded, I think. :)

I still dislike the example of the Marxist cafe worker versus the immigrant janitor. Don't they have the same cheap food, cheap housing, lack of health insurance, and joint pain? Perhaps a welder and a high school math teacher might be better examples of similar incomes but radically different lifestyles?

"Of course, as Spivak points out, efforts to give voice to subalterns reinscribe their voice inside hegemonic discourse, arguably further disempowering them." Perhaps "in some cases further disempowering them" would be more exact? Surely there are cases where joining the hegemonic discourse is empowering?

Good point about college and older users of the sites misguidedly trying to personalize an article that is, after all, about teenage experience; I'm guilty of that myself.

As to whether it's racist to note the Latino/MySpace correlation, I would say that when you're trying to change something, both loud and quiet approaches can work, and reasonable people can disagree about which to use in a given situation. Pointing out inequality can be construed as a strident, forceful call for change; or it can be construed as a scarlet letter forever cementing the inequality. If that second interpretation takes hold, everyone's going to have a hair trigger when it comes to shooting the messenger. If a whole community of Latino activists is trying very hard to take a quiet approach to merging Latino culture and US culture, then as in most movements, only the leaders are really aware that they made a choice to take that approach and not the other. An outsider pointing out inequality just strikes the rank and file as a contradiction to the party line, with no mitigating subtleties involved. Interestingly, the black civil rights movement was sort of the reverse: talented, educated blacks who wanted to be doctors, corporate lawyers, or architects, when they could have been criminal lawyers, journalists, activists, teachers, or politicians, were widely and harshly rebuked by the civil rights movement for turning their backs on the movement. Some of this even happens today. Both situations are produced by a lot of honest, well-meaning people, and it's a real shame this one made you into yet another victim of the noise machine, the mass outrage the internet can produce at the flick of a switch.

Good point about needing to overcome the tendency of people to self-segregate online. Maybe liberal academic bloggers need to sponsor a big "see how the other half lives" day every year, where the liberals and the conservatives, or the religious networks, or the racial networks, who are interested in the idea can make a formal effort to go read each other's blogs, and start polite, thoughtful debates that involve references and research. (Make your own joke about how "But, my dear sir, if you educate them, they will no longer be [members of opposing group].")

"Consider a brand like Coach. You'll find that this is consumed heavily by both rich and poor, but not by middle class. Why is this?" Perhaps the poor can only afford shallow expenses, the rich can afford both shallow and deep expenses, and the middle class can afford only one of the two? If it's one or the other I think almost anyone would choose deep expenses like pensions, education, and health care, rather than shallow ones like fine Coach leather goods. Oscar Wilde probably said all this far better than I could.

"I do hope that I'll be able to continue blogging without every piece being so controversial and overwhelming." I'm guessing it's going to be a 15-minutes-of-fame, lightning-never-strikes-the-same-spot-twice situation, and you'll never get major public notice for your blog again. But who knows?

"all over whom" -> "all of whom", "has falled out" -> "has fallen out", I doubt anyone cares since this is after all a casual essay.

Phil, be careful about buying into the stigma of the word "weird," which seems to have increased greatly in the US the past 5 years or so. Some of my best friends are mutants.

Kevin Guidry said "It's perfectly natural that people integrate their offline social networks and contacts with their online activities, import them into their online environments, and continue their patterns of relationship built around shared interests, cultures, and other commonalities." True, but it's also perfectly natural for people to grow into new groups and new identities online, where the risk is less, and it should be encouraged by trying to keep the net's social networks free of unnecessary walls, taboos, and castes.

David Dyer-Bennet: I'd say that money is very much of class, although education is a lot of it too. There are also all sorts of subtle tribal markers in art, fashion, music, language, and for that matter geography involved as well.

Thank you for the hug. We all need more of those.

Alex UA: No, not conceited much. I don't think one can easily and favorably compare posting an article on one's blog or website and waiting for comments with traditional academic peer review. There is undoubtedly value in gathering input from a very wide audience and one could make a argument that the closed and insular nature of traditional academic peer review may be one of its faults. But to expect every comment from every (potentially anonymous or unidentifiable) commenter to be weighed the same regardless of their knowledge of the topic at hand is a bit much to expect. There are many very smart, dedicated people working on more public alternatives to traditional double-blind peer review but I don't think this is a viable alternative.

I am simply concerned that danah, or anyone, may view this as closely related to a future evolution of academic peer review when I don't see this as being at all closely related. Maybe I'm wrong and I guess time will tell.

This discussion, of course, has nothing to do with a perceived increase in the dissemination and discussion of research and other academic writings outside of academia. That's another discussion altogether and a trend that seems to be, IMHO, overwhelmingly positive.

interesting. reminds me of some of the conclusions in a book about the internet having qualities of the geographical place its inhabitants are from. [Daniel Miller, Don Slater. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Berg, 2001]

Have you seen any traces of class fluidity/boundary crossing/mobility in this work? That might be very interesting to examine, because it would be a completely different view of network formation than the highly overused (and, IMHO, under-informative) graph-structural models in vogue can do alone. Can we see class structure developing online? What's the process of finding your place in such a class structure, when done online? How is membership managed if class identity is transitional? Can you really isolate discourse around class, and if so, what are the signifiers used? A classic work on this topic illustrates caste fluidity in India:

M. N. Srinivas. A Note on Sanskritization and Westernization. The Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Aug., 1956), pp. 481-496

Sorry you had to defend yourself so.

I'm so close to the technology I rarely get to think about the bigger societal implications. So I'm glad that you are, and so deeply. Thanks.

-Stan

Phil, be careful about buying into the stigma of the word "weird," which seems to have increased greatly in the US the past 5 years or so.

I'm not in the US, my frame of reference is a bit longer than the past five years, and I didn't refer to any person, subculture, style or set of ideas as 'weird'. All in all I don't feel I earned this admonition.

Some of my best friends are mutants.

I really doubt it.

I, for one, really didn't have a problem with the informal, blog nature of your original post. When I want a peer-reviewed article with explicit methodology and data sets, I'll read a sociological journal, not a blog. As such, your original post didn't bother me at all in terms of presentation, tone, etc.

What I disagreed with was your main thesis. Though your discussion here of the terms you used in the first post was indeed helpful, I don't think you've adequately addressed the idea that the division you've described has far more to do with technology than class. Specifically, Facebook seems to be for one thing and MySpace seems to be for something else, and these divergent purposes, I believe, can explain the differences in user base far more effectively than any theory which posits a class distinction. I discussed this here.

Hi danah,

First there was peer review, now there's mob review!

This must be the summer for it. I recently got slammed as a racist over something I admit I could have written better about comic book history (the mob reviewers didn't like my clarification much better, but I'm not sure what anyone is reading anymore because it sure don't sound like what I wrote), then there was a largish LJ flare up over the word "miscegenation," and now Mary Buchholz is being criticized by people who haven't read her actual work on nerds and hyperwhiteness, but did read a negative NYT article about a book that hasn't actually been published. Something in the water? Who knows?

Too bad about USC. We all said WTF? when Annenberg went away.

Good luck with everything.

Hey danah, at the risk of being redundant:

{{hugs}}

I loved reading the first essay, and now your response. I was just so struck by how much the reaction amplified and commented on the issues we discussed at futureofthebook.org back in 2005. So much has happened since then, and this that has rocked through your world is another milestone upon that path.

Chris

I read with interest the manifestations of class.
Is there research to answer whether Mac vs. PC is one of those differences?
is there a greater proportion of Mac users among FaceBookers than among MySpacers.?

Is it awful that my initial reaction to reading your essay was to post the link to it on my thesis advisor's facebook wall?

Danah,

You've been a constant inspiration for the past 18 months or so as I've delved into the social network things. Thank you so much for sharing your work. It is quite unique and invaluable in understanding how the internet affects our everyday life and our societies.

One of the aspects of your work I particularly appreciate is this constant desire of beeing as clear as possible when exposing new ideas : the fine, simple and cautious tuning of your sentences to make sure you make yourself understood.

Funnily enough, I'm french and it's easier for me to understand your essays than it is to understand french sociologists essays since they dont have this concern of being clear and simple.

I thought this essay was brilliantly provocative and thoughtful. (Sorry if it looks a bit oportunistic but do you mind if I refer to my blog and my post on that very subject : http://ceciiil.wordpress.com/2007/06/25/hypertext-weekly/)

In particular, these concepts of Hegemonic and Subaltern people are so appropriate, they just put a brand new and clear perspective on teen social organisations.

My feeling is that people just get very annoyed when all of a sudden they are brought back to this deterministic reality : no matter how hard we try, we still belong to a class and our behavior is quite often very predictable. What this essay claims is that is is true both in Myspace and in the meatspace. And this is where it gets fascinating.

I think teenagers just get particularly upset with this type of analysis since their main objective while building up their own personality is to be unique and different.

Especially on the internet which is perceived as a space of free expression. All of a sudden, someone comes up and say : "Hey guys , dont get to excited by your electronic self : broadly speaking there only are 2 ways for you to be unique and different, even on the internet."

Instead of getting upset, they should read this essay properly and be grateful for all the time and disenchantment these lucid thoughts will save them.

On his blog (http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2007/08/are-you-a-synth.html), David Armano talks about how important "Human Synthetizer" are today to understand the constantly shifting world : "one of the most important traits of a synthesizer is the ability to produce a set of �outputs� which moves insights from the abstract to the concrete(...)I believe that these soft skills are needed now more than ever because design, technology, business, brand and human needs have never been so intertwined before, so co-dependent"

This is exactly what you are for us, Danah. Thanks again for your great work.

{{hugs}}

Danah,

I read your original post and thought two things: "Duh" and "I don't think I've ever seen that presented so neatly." Well done.

Not long after reading it, I was at dinner for a friend with seven other women. I brought up your article, and nearly all of them reacted the same. The exception was the daughter of a local politician, a self-professed "cotillion-and-country-club" girl. She had a violently negative reaction to the whole concept. It turned out that she was the only person at the table of college-educated professional women who didn't have a MySpace page, only Facebook. (Full disclosure: I'm MS and no FB) She resented being called "a hegemon," and although I tried to point out that the term, in and of itself, is value neutral, she wasn't having any of it. If the drubbing you received was an amplified version of that, you have my sympathies.

Back to your original post: I especially liked your explicitness in placing cultural capital as distinct from purely economic class. I think that's a division many are loathe to acknowledge. And to craft as thorough and well-thought-out a response as you did was incredibly stand-up. Congrats.

I look forward to reading more of your work.

Just stumbled upon your piece and found it fascinating. My research motive was not driven by interest in learning about "class", however-but by concern as a parent of a 12 year old boy who just created a "My Space" page, against my wishes.
Both parents-college educated and professional--yet needing quick post-graduate insight into effective parenting. Any recommendations for how to best guide our son- and how to respond to "secret My Space"?

The more I thought about this, the more I wondered if perhaps some of the backlash you experienced is directly related to the influx of older tech types to Facebook.

Your stated purview is teen culture, and you obviously grasp how much identity-formation goes on during those years. Many people who enter into tech and related fields were once subaltern teens themselves (and this goes for the tech journalists, publicists and marketers too). This is the point at which their early identities were formed, and is the culture they feel an affinity to.

However, they are now forced to confront (thanks in part to your essay, but there are also larger, social factors at work) that they are the new hegemony, that the dominant culture has gone geek in ways they couldn't have imagined. This causes cognitive dissonance, similar to what is experienced by first-generation college graduates from lower- and working-class backgrounds. They are in the midst of reformatting their identifiers, which tends to make people feel vulnerable and cranky.

Actually, what this essay does is make me aware of the criticisms you got, in the process of seeing how you respond to them. When I read your original essay, few of those criticisms occurred to me in the first place. Partly that may be because I didn't realize I was reading something by a known researcher, and therefore didn't start with the bias that this was academic research (though by the time I finished reading it, I knew it had some relationship to academic research).

When I read your original essay on this it was both "duh" and eye-opening: it finally made sense to me why some people I know use myspace. Also, it's one of the few times I've found a marker with which I can clearly place myself in a class someone else has described - I use Facebook, and think of myspace as "ugly". Most class descriptions in books I've read leave me out, except for one book which described a "Class X" in the final chapter, which seemed to fit me.

danah:

I just wanted to add another show of support. It is incredibly unfortunate that smart, interesting information was distorted by people who refused to read and think before speaking. I have seen the same mistakes made on several blogs, especially since the MSNBC thing, and it just sucks. Maybe you and Robert Putnam need to join forces in some kind of academic freedom vs. media/bloggers fight! ;)

Best wishes.

wow. i read your article a couple weeks back. thought it was spot on, and definitely got me to thinking a little bit more about the two services myspace and facebook.

ok - but it was nothing really controversial. and i mean that in a good way.

this is why i absolutely abhor the internet. everyone brings their own little niche opinions to everything and judges based on those, whether or not they have relevance to the thing being judged.

ok - i dont abhor the internet. i just think that blog comments, blog posts and media responses to the preceding definitely follow a bell curve from absurdly stupid to astoundingly brilliant.

anyways, keep up the good work, danah.

wow. i read your article a couple weeks back. thought it was spot on, and definitely got me to thinking a little bit more about the two services myspace and facebook.

ok - but it was nothing really controversial. and i mean that in a good way.

this is why i absolutely abhor the internet. everyone brings their own little niche opinions to everything and judges based on those, whether or not they have relevance to the thing being judged.

ok - i dont abhor the internet. i just think that blog comments, blog posts and media responses to the preceding definitely follow a bell curve from absurdly stupid to astoundingly brilliant.

anyways, keep up the good work, danah.

"MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, "burnouts," "alternative kids," "art fags," punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn't play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm".

What is that about? what about the "The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other "good" kids" why arn't they also on myspace?, I mean you are generalising too much, and then you go on, and you say, "These are kids whose parents didn't go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school".

That is just false and you know it, you are just saying that because you think that, because a large population of latinos don't get instructed and have to work, and because "gangstas" are usually black and prefer to work, and are you using immigrants to once make reference to the latinos or people of color? I mean if that isn't generalising I don't know what is, well, it's my point of view and I'm really... I don't know, not angry, just disappointed once again by the american people (you see that I'm generalising).

I don't want to make this personal, even though I would really like to, because let's face it you're maybe not gonna read it, and if you do you won't give a fuck, but I mean who the fuck uses "queer kids" to talk about gays for fuck sakes, it's not a fucking plague!!

Sincerly, The Mexican "queer kid".

P,S Please excuse the big words I use at the end of the comment, it's just frustration of hearing this over and over again, oh and btw what the bloody hell do you know about freaking High School, it varies from region, honey.

This comment makes no sence reading it again, but since I don't give a shit I'm going to post it anyway :D

I must say was surprised at the responses your blog got. The amount and the content of much of it. I think it has much to do with something that happened last night when i began reading the original. My sister had told me about your essay and I was curious so I 'googled,' found and began to read it. Halfway through - since I was using her laptop - my sisters asks me if I'm reading the whole thing. She looks incredulous and so do I. Am I reading the whole thing? Of course! Why wouldn't I, if I wanted to be able to come to any conclusions? I love my sister but I wouldn't be surprised if half the people who responded didn't read the whole thing and/or ignored all warnings about the informality of a blog/the 'inaccuracy' of the terms used. I am not saying that half the people actually did this, I'm just saying that I wouldn't be surprised since I've only seen quotes from the first half of the essay. (:P)

Much of what was in the essay, I already knew about and the implications of your study, I'd figured out but hadn't voiced my opinions. I got a myspace first because my sister had one, because it was an alternative to facebook (i was waiting for my .edu before i got one) and because it was 'the cool' place to be online in my hs. (Now where have i heard that before lol) But, I haven't been going there too much anymore, because:

1) I shifted with the rest of my hs to facebook and it became the place where the 'honors kids' got together and discussed how they were procrastinating over their next AP English essay. No matter how boring this sounds, it was cool and I felt comfortable discussing college plans/admissions essays, NHS meetings and prom on facebook when myspace comments usually consisted of those annoying "Send this to 20 ppl who are your friends and blah blah blah," or ppl I'd met on myspace talking about their lives.

2) I was excited about college and couldn't wait to meet other freshmen on facebook. Not that I couldn't meet them on myspace but the myspace group for my school was a tad weird and topics for discussion where obviously meant for an older generation. (I'm admitting my youth here and my hesitancy to jump into convos about clubs and drinking)

3) There was an exclusivity/safety about facebook that myspace never had. For one thing, you could be certain (well could have been) that any adults on facebook where associated with a college (while that definitely doesn't guarantee safety, it is oddly comforting) whereas the only adults I've had contact with on myspace where usually 40-ish pervs trying to add me to their frienslist. I wasn't scared but I was tired ad irked out.

4) I hated seeing those "shave the legs/slap the belly/give Britney hair" ads. A few people i know are actually getting of myspace completely but most retain their accounts. I'm staying. Why? The music.

I know it sounds like I'm saying the people who are on myspace don't discuss school work and/or school related activities. Well that's exactly what I'm saying because I've been there and I know who is on myspace and they aren't the people i talk to on facebook.
I'll stick to facts here: My hs is divided into the 'honors kids,' (i think that is self-explanatory), the 'good not-so-honors kids,' 'wangstas,' (they pretend to be tough and black but when you live in a suburb in Westchester you can't claim much hood), 'the latinos/hispanics,' (they tend to band together even though they could fit into any other groups) and the 'emo kids' (whose lives are allllllways filled with woe). We were all in myspace with our own little social networks but when facebook opened its doors to high schoolers, guess who moved and guess who stayed behind. Well I'll just save you the trouble by telling you. The first two groups were the first to go and then the 'wangstas' split with half of them on facebook and the rest on myspace. I don't think any group is good or bad but this is what happened in my school and each person has their own reason for moving or staying. I think the shift was unconscious and the division only happened when some people just weren't going anywhere.
Why is any one surprised or complaining? Facebook isn't all good and Myspace isn't all bad. Those same ppl who discuss school work still have 500+ pics of them at parties they shouldn't have been in and I don't know anyone from any of the groups in my school who isn't going to college. I think everyone should just calm down and examine their values. Who you hang out with does not determine where you want to go. If you are a latino parent and expect you child to get a job after hs and your child is on myspace, then don't get mad when ppl say that. It is not an insult to say a dead man is dead. And your kids aren't staying there because they have no prospects or because they don't want to go to school or because they don't like facebook. They stay there because their friends are there which is only a problem if you don't like their friends and in that case, too bad. The problem isn't saying who is on myspace. The problem is acting like they shouldn't be there. Like they're bad or are degenerates because they are. The problem is kids making fun of other kids because they like something different and that has been going on long before the internet even existed. So instead of attacking someone who brought this fact to light (once again), why aren't parents teaching their kids tolerance, manners and when to mind their own business. I understand that i am addressing different sets of parents (parents with the 'hegemonic' kids and the parents with the 'subaltern' kids) but I feel if there was more tolerance on both sides there wouldn't be any sides at all. One step at a time. The 'hegemonic' kids should stop calling people 'weird' (i suppose that would include myself (i hate when that happens)) and the 'subaltern' kids should stop thinking that they are. Everyone is perfectly normal by 'human' standards but we all have different tastes and I would never call someone weird because they like sushi when i don't.

I'm a teenager and this is my opinion. I'm not sure if other hschoolers have responded to this blog but i think they should.

This is really long... i wonder if can post so long a comment...
Oh and by the way: {{hugs}} ^_^

Oooooooooh!!! Something else I would like to add. Everyone seems to have a problem with names/terms used in the original essay. Have they stopped to consider the fact that these names weren't engendered by the writer but by this society's teens? Instead of attacking (i hate to repeat myself...sigh) the person who brought these terms to light, why don't they start conducting mass funerals for the words and inviting their kids. (lol)
If there is a problem (and there is definitely a problem) its roots seem to lie mostly with the name callers and if people have a problem with the names (and people obviously have a problem with the names (particular those given to the predominant myspace set(and who but the 'good kids' came up with those names))) then perhaps they should start taking a closer look at what their kids are saying. Once more: Tolerance! Manners!! And Mind Your Own Business!!!

Btw, i read a couple of the other responses and I found one extremely funny. The parents of the kid with the 'secret myspace' account. I have tears in my eyes right now, it was so funny. I just learned from someone who tried to delete her myspace account that myspace actually asks you if you are a parent wanting to delete your child's account because he/she created it against your wishes. I think that deserves a big: WOW.
Can I just say that your 12yr old probably created the account to mess with you? lol. But I'm 17 and I still do things like that just to mess with my folks. Can I also say that by forbidding your child you are fostering the belief that myspace is bad and that the kids on it are bad? Can i say further that myspace's bad reputation has more to do with the 'tragedy of the commons' (lol) than with actual bad kids? Like saying the Bronx is bad. (oooh, i wonder how many ppl will jump on me for that) Well since I am actually saying these things, I'll stop with the questions but will have the temerity to give some advice.
First: I am one of those kids that teachers and parents alike just love. I do all my school work on time and wonderfully, I have big plans to publish several novels, invent two things, create an organization to rival UNICEF, create an online, up to date, useful biology e-text book, and to become a world renowned neurosurgeon and I'm just plain sweet (lol) I also have a myspace account.
Second: You sound like good, concerned parents who want to raise your child in the best possible way. It is unlikely that having a myspace account will ruin your child's life when he is surrounding by such motivating factors as a stable home, a good school and well educated parents.
My Advice: While it is unasked for, I would advice you to talk to your son and let him know you know he has the account and also let him know it's ok (not to disobey but to be on myspace) because it is. That way you get to teach him to be 'net-savvy,' as my mom would say, to warn him all the time about predators and all the bad people who give myspace a bad name (because there are bad people online in general) and to generally keep an eye on what he's doing. The more restrictions you place on him unreasonably, the more likely he'll do something really bad behind your backs that you would have a reasonable reason for disallowing. We teens/preteens are far from stupid and can figure out what certain things lead to or why certain things are bad but we're still growing up and we usually need you parents to lead us in the right direction. While we don't like hearing it, we will undoubtedly do it if it is couched as a suggestion that does not imply our ignorance. Even though 12yr olds are generally ignorant about the darker side of the world (i know i was), they still like believing they know everything and you can't prove them wrong because they get mad so all you have to do is guide, without forbidding, them until they do know what they need to know. A weekly episode of "How to catch a Predator," would do wonders. Cheers!
I seem to have gotten off topic...eh.

When I first read your original essay (fifteen minutes before reading this clarification) I was pretty squarely in the "duh" camp. I mean, I even identified some of my own reactions in those of the "hegemonic" individuals (I myself got facebook in '04 when I was a freshman in college and got a myspace a few months after that. I've since deleted the myspace account because of relative inactivity and the fact that it's horribly coded). Even when I had a myspace account I felt like a lot of myspace pages were terribly, laughably ugly and even unreadable. I've never been a fan of garish or ostentatious displays, so this was immediately offputting.

Anyway, I'm not trying to fit your work into my own experiences, since I'm not a teen anymore. But your work seems pretty obvious to me.

And as for people who write death threats, or angry parents... does anyone actually believe that the work of one academic/blogger really has such an effect on their/their childrens' lives? Parents and social groups have a much greater influence on childhood development than some blog article that, while well-written, was not all that widely read (even by those criticizing it, apparently). It's all very inscrutable to me.

Anyway, good work.

:hugs: from me as well.

I agree with what John Dodds said (July 26, 2007 02:55).

Dear Danah,

First, I want to sincerely thank you for asking the right questions!
I've seen some of the counter-arguments and comments made on your research on other blogs and websites and they are disappointingly weak... Many of them merely try to diminish the value of your findings using bad humour. (What bothers me even more is the fact they are the ones getting the most "credit")

As an internet entrepreneur, I've often observed that people perceive the internet as a phenomenon that is remote from reality. I believe it's a misconception and eventually users as a mass will drag the realities of life into the virtual world (Nobody gets a second life ;-) )
Bringing up the "social classes" issue in the context of social networks seems like the right thing to do. Social networks are by definition social, thus, there are no reasons to believe they will escape the segmentation that currently occurs in the real world.

As part of my own professional research I opened accounts on both, Myspace and Facebook, although I personally favor Facebook (Facebook is the one I actually use) as I find it more relaxing and more practical. I think that it's not that facebook is a better version of myspace in terms of social networking but rather that Facebook and Myspace distinguish themselves in their very essence and the way they allow their users to define themselves:
On Myspace "who I am" as a user is defined by "what I am ,like and think". To me it seems that users on myspace have a tendency to focus on a rather individualistic-self that may even be sometimes imaginary. The name says it all: MY Space. Furthermore, it looks as though the young users are more prone to expressing their love for idols, symbols and second-rate poetry.
On Facebook "who I am" is rather defined by the "people I know".
It's an environment were real life connections play a greater role. Users dont spend time inventing new personalities but rather focus on managing their real social relationships. This seems to fit better the lifestyle of the "hegemonic" class were networking is valued for professional and social purposes. On a different note, there seems to be a lot of unhealthy voyeurism and jealousy going on Facebook.

From my own experience, I retain that there is an essential difference between the two social networking giants and it can be observed in the way users define themselves on each of them. After reading your article, I realized that this difference is perhaps the symptom of a clear social cut between the users of Myspace and Facebook.

Waiting impatiently to read your new research... Thank you Danah...

(Please allow me to apologize in advance in case I wrote something that is offensive to anyone)

Smart articles and enlightening. Thanks for the thought and sharing.

I have to say...in midst of finishing up my own dissertation but had jokingly stated I wanted to make my research on the why behind the rapid growth of facebook in middle east as opposed to myspace.....and , what I have found certainly touches up on the nature of your lively commentary. if you would like to talk about it, do give me a shout. I am not much of a public blogger. I am assuming that my contact info is listed....cheers,

tanya

Thank you for your thorough study and your essay on MySpace and Facebook. I have 2 teenage stepsons. The 18yr-old son (then 16) was one of the reasons why I have a MySpace profile, while the younger one did not care to have a profile at that time. Now both the 18yr-old and the 14yr-old, are flocking to Facebook and subtly suggestred their discrimination against MySpace... I don't even think they realized their subtle suggestion themselves... I do find your writing very intelligent and enlightening. It certainly clarified for me the differences between the two social sites and helped me emerge some new attitudes and ideas on how to deal with this. And I do find your response article very entertaining simply because I saw how many people misunderstood your intentions. Again--Thank you!
{{hug}}

Just happened across your article, and I would like to say your observations confirmed my own suspicions about site preference and 'class'. Although I attributed it to IQ-or maybe education...which on second thought may be a function of social position...would the fact that I am a 35 yr old college-educated Canadian have anything to do with my bias? Of course it would.
I digress. Nice work.

Thanks for writing both essays - I just read them after seeing them mentioned on Very Short List. I'm a 47 year old father of 11 and 14 year old daughters, in London, UK, and your work helps me to start thinking about the 'same old issues' of class etc in the internet age. Your quote that it is dangerous if people who are different don't interact resonates with me and perhaps encouraging my kids to use SNS to create different experiences than they get at school is something to consider.

Great stuff, keep it up.

The article and the response to critiques were both very interesting. I've been interested in how social conflict and status play out in an educational setting since I got into middle school, and this gave me some things to think about. It's very worrying that what you call "hegemonic" and "subaltern" teens have become asscoiated by many with good and bad.

I am always interested to read essays on 'class', particularly American essays.

I grew up the son of immigrants - albeit not from Oakland. My father and mother both worked menial jobs from the day that I was born until the day they both died. I have no doubt that I would have qualified as one of the "subaltern" teens that the author appears so concerned about.

And yet, I still enjoy theater, I still enjoy literature, I go to the cinema and not the movies, I strive to do better, I stayed in school and obtained a post-graduate degree - all values passed on by my very working-class parents. It wasn't until several years of working on Wall Street at a six-figure salary and owning my own home that I ever considered myself as middle-class.

As always, the (undoubtedly middle-class) author has appropriated the "good" values as "middle-class", re-inforcing the usual cultural sterotypes and class prejudices. It's hardly surprising then that teens see the world in equally simple terms.

I just wanted to add my support in for you. I was apparently extraordinarily late to the game and as such read both the original essay and the later clarification/extension at the same time. My reaction as I read the former was mostly one of "duh" interspersed with moments of "well I never thought about that, but that makes a lot of sense." And I'd like to say I'm surprised by the misinterpretation and complete lack of any attempt to interpret or even read your essay by those wanking (in the internet sense, not the other) about it, but honestly I can't say that I am.

A tip of the hat to you: First for writing the essay to begin with, saying things about class, when in America the subject is in some ways more taboo that talking about race, and second for holding up so incredibly well under the storm and writing what may be he most calm, rational and helpful clarification post I've ever seen in any similar situation.

I'm looking forward to reading the academic paper based in these ideas, no matter how long it takes to arrive.