- Social *media* does not model social *networks*. - Social media *flattens* our social networks by applying the same type of access, importance, and labels to varying types of relationships. - Platforms have become more flexible in this area by offering features like “close friends”, lists, user groups, more robust privacy settings. - We’re still ultimately required to negotiate our positions in multiple group at once. - Facebook, for example, sees Grandma as being the same type of “profile” as people I went to middle school with. - This isn’t how we perform relationships in real life, or even the way we think about connecting with others. - It would be awesome to even have a simple drop-down menu that lets you assign a certain type of relationship to another profile. - [[{1.2a1a} social media removes agency in our identity performance]] - This is part of how social media [[{1.2a1} social media requires fragmentation and decontextualization of our identities|decontextualizes the self]]. - Maybe it’s social, but not relational. - As [[boyd, danah]] described [[boyd, danah - 2007 - None of this is Real|Friendster]]: - “Friendster **flattened multiple local social contexts into a single performance space.**” - This flattening is what *causes* [[{1.2a2} context collapse]].