Friend Me if You Facebook: Generation Y and Performative Surveillance

Facebook was founded as a way to enhance face-to-face contact on university campuses, and so its virtual and physical life are unique on the internet. The performance of self online versus the performance of self “on ground” constitutes a particular dynamic. Members of the Facebook community use it to build and enhance their “real” relationships through their unique performances of online self, and these fluid performances, which may look like exhibitionism, are energetic engagements with the panoptic gaze: as people offer themselves up for surveillance, they also resist being fixed as rigid, unchanging subjects.