Adorno, Benjamin and the Facebook World Founded in February 2004, Facebook is a social utility that helps people

communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph or the digital mapping of people's real-world social connections. Facebook now has over 800 million users. It is made up of site functions, applications and features such as a persons homepage or profile; this then includes a news feed, a personalized feed of his or her friends updates. The Profile displays information about the individual that one has chosen to share, including interests, education, work background and contact information. Most importantly, photos, events, groupsthat let people connect and share in engaging ways. Additionally, communicate is always available with other users through chat, personal messages, wall posts, pokes, or status updates. According to Adorno and Horkheimer theory of mass deception and social control, societal hierarchy assigns social roles and positions in order for the cultural industry to function and in this structure there maintains a balance. The question they pose is whether or not this idea of individuality that we hold so close in defining our lives, is really just a myth. With this in mind, Facebook has become somewhat of its own world that includes even those who choose not to have one (via pictures uploaded, messages, groups, etc.); Chances are, if you are part of someones life that actively uses a Facebook account, then through them, whether you like it or not, are also part of the Facebook world (and chances are, you know more than one person on Facebook). This Facebook World, as I will now refer to it, has developed, and not slowly, its own set of shared attitudes, values, and

practices through those characterizes; it has developed its own culture. So now, we can also begin to see, a societal hierarchy within Facebook as well. Unlike other institutions, organizations that we may be part of thus far in our lives (work, school, living communities) that provide their own set of attitudes, values and practices, there is something else, something very different and elemental that Facebook offers to humanity, to our identity thirsty existenceit provides us with tools to design our own image that we put forth to the rest of the world. It allows us to see our own roles, our uniqueness displayed and playing back to us. This idea of being someone special is enforced and constantly recycling within all of the different (and constantly changing) applications and spaces provided on ones profile. As I have mentioned, the Facebook World, like that of our real world and its established social structures will exist with or without you, thus leaving you inclined and really almost forced to participate, the consequences being that if you do not, you will become an outcast and cease to exist in the culture that you are surrounded with everyday. This desire humanity shares, the desire to make our mark, to matter, is what Facebook drives successfully on with, providing one with this sensation through the most accessible mediumthe internet. One could argue the transgression of our personal humanistic emotions becoming a casual characteristic we are constantly aware of through status updates, pictures, our public notesbehind these curtains, whether the average person realizes what they are seeing or beginning to accept into their thought process, is one of a constant self examination. It allows you to become your own movie star and manipulate your own character just the way you would like, borrowing from others, and adapting new hobbies, interests, movies. You become and feel a sense of ownership with your character, that of being published. The Facebook page

serves as a living autobiography, only better, you can alter it; it changes and grows with youit is a mirror that shoots back what you would like to see. You can evaluate the lives of others in comparison to your own. This is not a new concept, this happens all the time with clothing, hand bags, and which still exists, but now a new evaluation is taking place through your profile. People are fascinated by other people, this has always been fact, but through this new medium, and our accessibility to one another, we have become our own entertainment, our own art. This heightened exposure of ourselves, the media no longer needs to seek out what it is we call for next or what new interests have bred among our attentions, it is all there for the cultural industry to manipulate in order to maintain social order. The death of the Benjamins aura due to the reproduction of art brings it to a mythical place and becomes available for us to assign to whatever we choose. Its loss of authority is what enables us to steal it for ourselves. Whatever we define as art, we seek for it to define ourselves and this is just what Facebook enables its audience to do; we are provided with so many reflections of society (which we also get to choose, among our friends) for us to grab and mold to our inner fantasies. As if slowly, we have become our own artwork.