This is the final post of the series that examines topics from the perspective of the characters in the upcoming novel, The Paths of Marriage which will be for sale starting 1 October 2014.
“The Implicit Outings of Facebook” is written from the point of view of the character, Deepa Deva.
Why hello there!
I’ve been on Facebook for a decade. Yes, a decade. Considering social media companies have used Facebook as the beacon of all things new age tech company is a total a mind boggler; when did it become standard that a company about ten years old has one of the longest histories in one of the most lucrative industries in the world? Despite the mind boggle-ness, I will admit that I can easily trace my social media evolution through one specific trait – being gay. Back when I created my Facebook profile in 2004, only the tech dweebs had joined. After all, what person with real-life social skills would bother to put intimate details online for complete strangers to see? In that certified, albeit brief era of dweebitude of social media, it was easy enough to make a decision as to whether to participate. I am, after all, an Indian nerd, so of course I participated.
Very quickly, however, the significance of all things social media changed. In what seemed like less than a year, social media went from geek haven to social norm. In fact, not only did it become a normal thing to do, a dearth in one’s social media presence was seen as being reclusive. In some professions, like mine in immigration research, we are now highly encouraged to have an online presence to expand our network, document our work, and connect with others for collaboration.
Having been in the target social media demographic of a university[1] student when that shift happened, I noticed a particular change that no one was quite prepared for – the implicit outing. For those of you who remember, the very early days of a The Facebook profile – remember that’s what it was called back then – was a simple page with demographic information, a picture and a text box where your friends could write stupid messages with way too many exclamation marks and basic-text male genitalia. Seriously, the early days of Facebook saw a lot of penises made out of asterisks.
Some of the things that a person could indicate in their profile were their sex, “looking for”, and “interested in.” “Interested in” was limited to male and female, and “looking for” included friends, relationship, short-term dating, and long-term dating. Provided she elected to share her information, you could thus see whether that cute girl in your psych class who gave off a queer vibe was dating someone.
This presented a bit of a problem for us gays, for as you see, back in the dark ages of 2005, being queer and open was not exactly as cool or as common as it is today. Though I was fortunate to go to the gay haven of NYU for university (sorry again, Americans), there was no way to ensure that classmates, professors or administrators would not change their general attitude and treatment of me once finding out my orientation. It’s always easy enough to trump up another excuse for a change in behavior to not appear homophobic.
So, for those of us who had reason to keep closeted on social media – in my case, not being out to my family[2] – we quickly learned how to adopt an ambiguous online presence. If we left out too much, something was clearly off. If we left out our relationship status, “looking for” and “interested in,” it was obvious we were gay, or worse, boring. Remember, this was back in the social media era when posting everything possible meant you were cool. It’s not like now when posting everything means you have no real friends. We therefore had to strike a balance without lying and therefore forever being subject to blind dates we definitely didn’t want.
The most popular method of choice for our implicit outings was to say one was “interested in” both men and women, add friendship to the “looking for” and decline to indicate a relationship status. That way, if anyone asked, you could easily reply with,
Of course I am interested in having both male and female friends even though my “dating preferences are not the same!”
Over and out, stop asking questions.
Alas, the mind wants to know what it can’t, so that meant in those earlier days of Facebook, when MySpace was morphing into its dark era of creepy stalker browser, a lot of my time on the site included random searches for women who had indicated they were “interested in” women and “looking for” a relationship. Sadly, those searches also turned up people who wanted female friends, including naïve straight women who didn’t know our gay code for online ambiguity…at least I think they were naïve straight women. And thus presented another problem. Were they indeed naïve straight women, or were they using their early-days Facebook profile as a way to out themselves? One never knew, as one could only make an implicit judgment.
The online saga of orientation ambiguity continues into present-day. With each new ridiculous change in privacy settings, user interface, NSA surveillance, or the like, those of us trying to maintain one profile for personal use versus another for anything else must play this game. Certainly, one could argue that we do the same in real life, and the hackers, stalkers, and NSA-ers are like that annoying ex-girlfriend who can’t wait to spill all your dirty little secrets, but the sheer volume and omnipotence of the interwebs is enough to make us online ambiguous profilers shudder at the idea of exposure.
Then again, after ten years of playing the game, perhaps at some point I will have concede that the ambiguity is a lost cause. Sure, it may mean some dark times ahead in my career at “International Research Institute Asian Country Office X”, but at least I can finally figure out if that cute girl from my psych class is a lesbian. Don’t tell my partner I said that.
Cheers,
Deepa Deva
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Buy the book on 1 October 2014. This is one powerful story you will never forget.
The complete The Paths of Marriage character series:
Deepa Deva – Implicit Outings on Facebook
Pooja Deva – The Narrative of Marriage
Lakshmi Deva – Pacing Oneself was not an Immigrant Option
Audrey Girard – How to Start a Conversation, American vs France
Anand Suresh – We all Spoke English, just not the Same Language
Alpa Deva – A Straight Coming Out Story
