[Rich Juzwiak / I'm Not Here To Make Friends! / 2008]

The above video is a supercut-edit that stitches together scenes of reality television dramatic tension where contestants assert their independence. I'm not here to make friends - a bold declaration that is not so much directed at other contestants but the home audience. I understand this is a game and I won't be crippled by empathy. If I watched more television I'd recognize what a cliché this utterance is; instead, I find the repetition of the statement perversely fascinating as it is sadistic and speaks to the desire to schematize and manipulate social relations. Ironically, this brand of televised Darwinism still thrives in an era in which we (the audience) obsessively micromanage our "friendships" through the social web.

"The Digital Given: 10 Web 2.0 Theses" by Ippolita, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter was just published in the most recent issue of Fibreculture and the missive offers a scathing critique of what remains of the web 2.0 bubble. The text offers point-by-point commentary on the financial meltdown, how the word "free" is a stand-in for "service economy" and the manner in which web services homogenize interactions. The authors on how social networks function similar to dissociative substances:

Networking sites are social drugs for those in need of the Human that is located elsewhere in time or space. It is the pseudo Other that we are connecting to. Not the radical Other or some real Other. We systematically explore weakness and vagueness and are pressed to further enhance the exhibition of the Self. 'I might know you (but I don't). Do you mind knowing me?'. The pleasure principle of entertainment thus diffuses social antagonisms—how does conflict manifest within the comfort zones of social networks and their tapestries of auto-customization?

This description of the social web is foreign, confused—we can assume that there will be no handy autocomplete functionality to get us out of this mess. Elsewhere in the text the collective outlines the reductive qualifiers by which we describe our relationships on the web:

We are addicted to ghettoes, and in so doing refuse the antagonism of 'the political'. Where is the enemy? Not on Facebook, where you can only have 'friends'. What Web 2.0 lacks is the technique of antagonistic linkage. Instead, we are confronted with the Tyranny of Positive Energy.

Asymmetrical warfare, asymmetrical friendship - this is cynicism put to good use. The essay is completely cranky but it suggests that it is indeed possible to pull back from and consider the protocols of the networks in which we are enmeshed. In listening to the misanthropic catchphrase in the video and contrasting that with the idiocy of "thanks for the add" (the rallying cry of banal accumulation) we get perfect dissonance. Perhaps "I'm not here to make friends" is a mantra for social pruning.

If nothing else, "The Digital Given" will provide a brief pause in your daily web-routine. It definitely forced one on me earlier today and it goes without say that I highly recommend the text. Kudos to Ippolita, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter for this vital document and to editors Anna Munster and Andrew Murphie for putting together what appears to be a great collection of essays.