The container concept “social
media,” describing a fuzzy collection of websites like Facebook, Digg, YouTube,
Twitter, and Wikipedia, is not a nostalgic project aimed at reviving the once
dangerous potential of “the social,” like an angry mob that demands the end of
economic inequality. Instead, the social—to remain inside Baudrillard’s
vocabulary—is reanimated as a simulacrum of its own ability to create
meaningful and lasting social relations.
I found the above excerpt
from the article What Is the Social in Social Media? by Geert Lovink to be very interesting with the way social media is
perceived as a simulacrum. In its simplest form, a simulacrum is a
representation of something else, a copy of the real. This got me thinking. Is
social media, then, a representation of real life? Or are we as a society
trying to make social media simulate life so that is more comprehendible for
us? I suppose the word social has a different meaning when it is combined with
the word media. Social media has a new set of structures different then the
structures we associate with the term social in real life. Social media changes
relationships, roles and class structures in society. It is hard to comprehend
a new definition for social than the one we already know. So, what does this
mean for future generations?
