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Solidarity in the age of the selfie
by Javier Toscano
“Liking” and “sharing” are two of the most prominent activities that internet users have taken upon themselves in
order to participate, interchange, transmit and/or express an opinion, as well as to shape and display their own
constructed identities on the web. Alone in Facebook, the biggest social network to date[1], the “like” button –
enabled on February 9th 2009[2]– has become a minimal interface on its own. It involves such a complexity, that it
is only through a variety of studies, and from a myriad of perspectives, that have we been able to grasp, partially,
some features of its initial and ongoing uses. Out of some of these approaches, we now know, for example, that there
is an effective neuronal response that links together a “liking” activity on the web and that section of the brain that
produces pleasure[3], or that it is possible to reconstruct, following the traces one leaves behind out of those “likes”,
actual political inclinations, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, emotional stability, ethnicity, age group, personal
tastes and an approximate intelligence quotient[4]. We also know that 5+ billion “likes” are enacted every day, and
that marketing strategies that advertise every kind of products –from breakfast oatmeal to political candidates– make
enormous efforts to obtain a share of them, for they denote projections of desire, tokens of approval, signs of future
possible purchase choices or even only secondary forms of “virtual consumption” on their own means. Nowadays, it
is clear that internet users shape, through their marginal “liking” and “sharing” behaviors, virtual avatars that are
very closely related to their “real” identities, with which they perform accordingly over virtual sociospheres.
Now, even in their short history, “liking” and “sharing” activities have undergone already a behavioral
transformation. In the beginning, they seemed to have been mostly used to express approval or support towards
creative sites, music bands, designer blogs or interesting “found” paraphernalia, such as a fan club would do. But
then they went on to reflect user profiles more directly, as everybody became a reference for somebody else, and
“liking” and “sharing” were the tools with which trends and “viral” transmission of material would be prompted.
Everyone became a node in an everincreasing flow of interrelated connections. Everyone could be an actual or a
potential trendsetter, and the recognition of this mechanism, embedded in the very meaning of a social network,
made the virtual sociosphere a place of encounters with its own seductive dynamic.
Even though the whole range of this dynamic is not clear, nor stable, one thing is certain: we have witnessed the
emergence of the virtual sociosphere as a significant political arena. This new place will not debunk the role,
strength, structure or entrenchment of traditional politics, but it has surely contributed for it to attain a different level
of complexity. Typical political antagonisms take place here on a daily basis already. And maybe more importantly:
political roles, attitudes, agencies or performances are being reassessed along a new interpretative horizon. Take
“solidarity” for instance. As I wrote before, in the early days of social networking, “sharing” was a plain way of
showing support for a variety of causes or affinities. It was easy to take the “sharing” activity as an act of solidarity,
a form of recognition, a way of making something visible out of the glut of information. For if in its formal
definition solidarity is the “unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common
interest; [a form of] mutual support within a group”[5], there was little doubt that “sharing” digital objects and
materials over social networks could indeed denote that kind of relationship. But “sharing” –we now know– has
come to imply currently a twosided gesture. On the one hand, it relates a specific interest with a user that wants to
be associated to that activity, through her virtually constructed avatar; on the other hand, it produces, through
repetition and reappearance, a form of content distribution that provides traffic for specific digital platforms. This
does not mean that “sharing” is, as a form of virtual solidarity, hapless. It means that it is more than that, more than
mere solidarity alone; and at the same time it is less, it is not quite solidarity, for it is not active and efficient in just
one straight, evident and unequivocal sense. Instead, it seems that “sharing” is for solidarity what the “selfie” is for
artistic selfportraits: a usercentered activity that expresses an active will to express itself, without the hassles and
uneasiness of a complicated process of finding out what (or how or why) to express oneself in the first place.
And yet…. sometimes “sharing” is all an issue needs, a simple trigger, a reminder, a kick. It is indeed a symptom of
our times, and only if we understand the full scope of its dynamics can we be able to propose creative détournements
around its seemingly neutralizing function. Social networks are a growing public arena, and the habits, the etiquette,
the schemes that are always in the wake of appearing on them might still bring some unexpected output, sometimes.
In other words, we cannot remain enraptured in the discursive “truth” of what some interface functions, however
minimal, promise to achieve. The fullfledge extent of possible interactions lies always a stepfurther, partially
unknown for sure, but surely also intuited and actively precalculated, engendered through a legion of algorithms, by
the corporations operating the platforms where those interchanges occur; and therefore, for every disruptive
transition, normalization follows as well, as always, close by.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkiMze2ZcE
[1] In 2016, Facebook has 1.55 billion active users worldwide, more than Whatsapp (500 million), Twitter (284
million) and Instagram (200 million) combined. Source: https://zephoria.com/top15valuablefacebookstatistics/
[2] http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/09/facebookactivateslikebuttonfriendfeedtiresofsincereflattery/
[3] The study I refer to correlates the search of “selfreputation” and neuronal activity, and tries to predict thus real
life vs. virtuallife engagements. Meshi, Dar; Morawetz, Carmen and Heekeren Hauke (2013), “Nucleus accumbens
response to gains in reputation for the self relative to gains for others predicts social media use”, Frontiers in Human
Neuroscience, 29, August; available online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00439/full
[last accessed: 29th January 2016].
[4] Kosinski, Michal; Stillwell, David, and Graepel, Thore, “Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital
records of human behavior”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol.
110 no. 15, available online at: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/15/5802.full?sid=d03440c928f7474c98c3
202cd18587e9 [last accessed: 29th January 2016].
[5] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/solidarity