Last week my colleague Jane, also known as JaneinJava, sent out a tweet asking for inspirtion for her “brand” video. I knew that her request was based on some work she was doing as an advisory planner for the upcoming ADE institute. Her tweet led to a lively discussion, headed as always by Adrienne, who voiced concern about the word “brand.” I quickly found myself on both sides of the debate. I understand the idea of “personal branding” and digital identity control; I get and to a large extent agree with the need to teach professionals how to “market” their online images and create recognizable “brand” which stands for certain values, so much so that I think I have done a pretty good job of “marketing” the “brand” of Intrepid through various blogs, youtube, and Flickr. I hope that through my work, my shared open identity, my photos, my videos, that the “brand” of Intrepid stands for honesty, openness, passion, and creativity. This image I have created, sounds so sneaky, has not been achieved by accident. I have worked hard to try and create a consistent “product” (my life) to “sell” to whoever is buying.
The problem Adrienne had, and after some thought I have too, is the use of business/corporate language to describe an act which in reality is entirely different. I realized that I am not creating a “brand” to “sell” to a “market.” I am sharing who I am, my identity with an audience. While the ideas may be similar and some may cry semantics, I think Adrienne is right. We must be weary about corporatizing education, art, and most importantly our digital identities.
Before you start thinking about the comments you will write about the problems with Apple in education and the ADE program in general, let me stop you. I am waiting to go through the ADE process to see how the program works. I want to get an inside look at the benefits of the community and to see the extent of which Apple influence their ADE “brands.” I want to see what they expect of their ADEs before I make judgment about the program. Many people I highly respect rave about it, and I will see for myself before I deride the program out of hand. So please do not turn this thread into an attack on the ADE program, the problems with corporate sponsored educational programs etcetera. I think those arguments are valid, and I would like to have them after I see what ADE is all about. I am honored and very excited to be involved, but I want to be a critical member who pushes the envelope. Sorry Apple, this is what you signed up for. It is what Intrepid is all about.
What I was hoping for from this post is a nice conversation about what you think about corporate language creeping not just into education, but in every aspect of our lives. Should we be worried? Are Adrienne and I overreacting? Is it just semantics? Or is there a problem with using the language of brands when discussing education, digital identity, sharing, and life in general.
And if you understand the concept, as I do, but only think that we should be using a different set of words, what do these words look like? What do we call the act of managing digital identity for the purpose of connection, community and sharing?
I need your help because it looks like I too will need to make a “personal brand” video during the ADE institute and I want to make sure I get it right. I am not a product, service, or business to be marketed. I am a human being trying to connect to a community of like minded human beings. What do you think?
Hi Jabiz, I’m glad you revisited this a while after the twitter discussion last week. Sometimes its good to mull idea over before revisiting them.
Like you, I empathised with both sides of the argument. The word ‘brand’ has a lot of negative connotations – especially for teachers (who lets face it are often a little left of centre anyway 😀 ). The word first conjures up images of mass production, factories, lack of individuality, brain-washing and so on…
On reflection though, I’m not to bothered with the adoption of the word in the sense of ‘personal branding’. Frankly I think it’s a little naive to believe that any of us are guilt-free of a little self promotion or displaying a face (or voice, as I am doing now) that represents some particular idea of ourselves that we want established in the minds of those we contact.
In the corporate world where would oxfam, the wwf, surfaid, cancer research or the nspcc be without a LOT of investment in branding? Not so many negative connotations associated with those brands.
As you say, the ‘Intrepid’ brand that you have established is an identifiable and recognisable one among the 70 or so people I follow on twitter …and so I read what you say and follow your blog and I get a lot out of it, develop as a teacher, impact the kids (and make the world a better place etc. etc.) I don’t think anyone would argue that this is anything but good?
I don’t see your ADE video as being anything but a continuation of what you have already started all over the web.
Jabiz…i’m in the middle of a presentation on this very thing. here’s my take on it: i think we – ESP in education – need to be very careful to remain cognizant of the corporate and capital operations and basis of social media platforms. i think there are still parts of the internet that may operate on gift exchange, but social media puts so much emphasis on the visible, recognizable identity (and attached metrics) of the user that traditional notions of social capital and gift are becoming inextricable in this medium. (my explication of these concepts, more exploratory than conclusive, is here: http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/04/01/social-capital-commodification-gift-economies-oh-my/)
that doesn’t mean we have to use corporate language. but i think trying to leave it out altogether creates a false notion for us users of the world we inhabit, and also creates a never-the-twain-shall meet binary between corporate and art/education/good. i think that’s false. not in terms of my own ethics, but in terms of the actual environment we are complicit in fostering when we’re online, and the good we do in this space.
the corporatization of education & identity is part of the neoliberal discourse that’s been breathing down our necks for 30 or so years, at least. it promotes a Me, Inc. view of the world, and an instrumentalist view of education that ignores the massive inequalities being replicated by the system. i don’t like it, or support it. but. from that neoliberal discourse comes a notion like branding, which even in traditional marketing doesn’t mean something you control but rather the way what you put out there is taken up. in social media, we are taken up by the traces we put out there and the visible metrics that represent our participation. social media is a creation/consumption kind of exchange – and the sum total of what you put out there and how it’s taken up is what i think of as brand. i could call it reputation, but that wouldn’t remind me that we all, even unintentionally, build and trade on social capital each time we participate in these exchanges, and that social capital can be converted to cash. which is a different kind of interaction than most of us outside major circles of power have ever had access to in embodied life. these differences – between embodied identity and digital identity, between the agency of the traditional embodied consumer and the so-called personal brand – seem to me to be significant in trying to understand what digital sociality is and which it means.
my research takes up social media users and our digital identities as what i call “branded cyborgs” or hybrid selves, human and technology and notions of capital (social & economic) all in circulation together. cyborgs – particularly in Haraway’s 1991 Manifesto – are “monstrous” couplings who bring together disparate cultural elements and often resist and undermine the dominant forces of power from which they originate. cybertechnologies have a military origin: you and i use them for very different purposes. branding has a corporate origin: my research suggests that social media & digital sociality may be shaping it into something else.
not b/c i think we should all fall in line & become little personal brands who conceive of ourselves as commodities, but b/c i think there’s subversion in co-opting the word for more complex use, and power in remaining aware of the ways in which we are taken up as brands, even if we conceive of the exchange we’re in quite differently.
I always thought words are the way we communicate thoughts. If one word doesn’t work (has too much baggage) then choose another. It is fun to argue about word meanings, but ultimately the meaning of all words are incredibly subjective, based on the user’s experiences.
My problem with using the word “brand” in relationship to a person is that typically brand creation tries to create a specific image for the product. Since people are not one dimensional and we (hopefully) grow and change, branding ourselves would be a constantly evolving process which I don’t think would really work.
So, if you do create a brand video of yourself, look at it as a snapshot in time. Be honest with who you are now and don’t fill it with what you hope to become. You can make that video when you succeed.
This is a very good point. I think about companies that change their branding and the outrage that ensues in some segments of their market – as if they don’t want that company to change and grow. They want it to stay the same – a sentiment we don’t want in the education world (at least I certainly don’t).
Ha, yes! Kind of like when Bob Dylan went electric.
There is the sense of permanence to the word brand that could (should) never be applied to developing teachers.
There are a number of examples where educators who have stood for something and got into politics, have later got in to trouble with a public who couldn’t accept a change in their views. http://www.angelfire.com/az/english4thechildren/krashen.html springs to mind.
So far from what I’ve read, this would be my #1 reason to avoid using it.
I like the idea of ensuring the personal branding video is understood to be a snapshot of who and where you are.
I think my perspective on branding in this kind of space is a little different to the general consensus in that I don’t think it needs to be a dirty word.
The two things I’m passionate about are learning and music – both things I consider to be equally balls-driven and creative, but over the years my involvement in the music side of things has become increasingly business-oriented through band management & event promotion.
We name our bands, draw them logos, have cover art designed, and in one of my cases, have suits designed and made as a united visual look for the live show. In every single case musically, my artistic integrity or that of my artists has not been compromised by making it recognisable.
I think this experience has made me look a little more kindly upon the idea in education. Kids remember their distinctive teachers who made things clear for them, right? As long as we’re remaining grounded in whatever place we’re coming from philosophically and pedagogically so that professional integrity’s not at risk, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making my work easy to recognise for my colleagues.
So are you saying gimmicks are okay and shouldn’t be discouraged in education? I thought of that after reading your comment about bands with similar outfits (and don’t get me wrong, DEVO and Kraftwerk are in heavy rotation at my house and I dont’ think twice about their matching suits). I wonder if these things can be distracting – that in making something recognizable we make it about the marketing and the gimmick around that idea rather than the “product” itself – the learning.
I think I can get behind this idea – of co-opting the corporate jargon in an effort to take the power back. However, I’m not so sure that would come across as such at this stage in the game. I think these discussions are powerful and important regardless of whether we reach a conclusion around it. My knee-jerk reaction is to say no to corporate language seeping into the education world, but they are related on so many other fronts that it seems impossible to actually stop it. And in that case, I think we do need to consider whether we move forward and talk to kids about personal branding (a revamped “here’s how to write a resume and why” lesson) or whether we come up with our own words and reasons.
As I said on Twitter during our discussion and as Bon has so eloquently stated here – I think we become brands whether we like it or not. The network commodifies us and categorizes us by our activity and the content we share and the language we use. It does so to market to us, of course, but I also think it is done as a way for companies to market themselves through us. When Myspace started, its ads included collages of images of actual users. I even remember a time when people were stoked to know someone that ended up on the Myspace ad. Now these campaigns and efforts are even more nuanced. They no longer need to emblazon their logos on a bus – we do it for them every day. Some people choose to take a proactive approach and consider their actions, content, presence in spaces, etc. so that they can attempt to shape their online identity (brand, reputation, ___), but we’re naive if we think it’s not being shaped for us regardless.
It is with that in mind that I think we should discuss these things and try to find a word or phrase that works for us as educators. As I lamented on Twitter, I think so often the education world feels a need to co-opt language from industries in an attempt to stay relevant (and even if we did so to take power back, I think this is what it looks like to the untrained eye). The side effect of that, I think, is that it waters us down. Yes, the ed world has been beaten to a pulp lately, but that doesn’t mean we take the easy way out and further indulge ourselves with corporate language (the precursor to handing over even more of ourselves to big business). It’s a harder path to take, but a journey worth making. To consider, and remain cognizant of, the ways in which we and the business world are connected while maintaining a firm grip on our identity – to not let education lose itself.
I don’t have a problem with the concept of branding generally. I had a professor in my teacher training who talked about the Personalized Classroom, where the space is special because of the teacher and the students join in that special-ness. While I have outgrown some of that, it influenced my early teaching, and I still overtly connect myself with certain core values and a certain look and feeling to the class. A few weeks ago, somebody did something in class and a girl said, ‘That’s so Kilmer,’ and we all knew what she meant. This is, essentially, branding, and I have no real problem with the practice. I think most good teachers do this. (‘It is what Intrepid is all about.’)
However, when applied to social media, I feel differently. Social media exists for marketing, and some of us try to ride on its back for free. (Some of us only pretend to do so, building up status to trade in as an author or consultant for hire.) By talking about my digital brand or whatever, I am giving in to the market-force purposes of social media. By using the language, we end up swimming in the waters of commercialization and consumerism that is the backbone of Web 2.0, a corporate title in its own right.
Alec Couros shared this link to a post by Steve Cheney – “How Facebook Is Killing Your Authenticity.” Some interesting bits in here that I think might be pertinent to this discussion:
http://stevecheney.posterous.com/how-facebook-is-killing-your-authenticity
I’m not sure what you’d like me to add to this discussion here, Jabiz, that I haven’t already shared. (This is yet another situation when I find myself wishing I could capture somehow a long, mostly synchronous, conversation had on Twitter. Sigh.)
You’ll recall that my initial objection to the idea wasn’t just about the commodification and business/corporate-ness of the term. While that is part of it, that’s not all of it. For me, what’s a bigger beef is what the word “brand” means. I’m not talking about connotation here, or implications, though that is what many others (including yourself) have already picked up on. I’m talking about the denotation of the word. For starters:
– a simple Google search definition
– on Wikipedia
– the etymology of the word
When I look at the above definitions, I am fairly certain that I, Adrienne Michetti, am none of these. There you have it: I am not a brand.
Many can (and did) argue that it’s a matter of semantics, and that words’ meanings evolve over time, blah blah blah… and claim that they want to use this word in a different context (i.e., education) and want it to mean something else (i.e., identity, hybrid self, to quote Bonnie Stewart), but the fact remains that’s not what this word means. Sure, we can try to change that meaning — I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the rest of the world understands “brand” to mean what those three links above state, and NOT what some are implying here. The example I used on Twitter was of teenagers who call each other “gay” in jest, but insist, “Oh, but I don’t mean it like that. That’s not how I’m using the word.” To which we might respond, “But that’s what the word means. Your use of the word has ramifications because of what it means.” I’m asking that we be mindful of the words we use to describe things. I do think we need a new word for what we’re describing here; “brand” just doesn’t work. It’s inaccurate, plain and simple.
I’m curious to read Bonnie Stewart’s research (and we did have a lengthy conversation about it on The Twitter), but I disagree with her implication that social capital is inevitably converted to cash. I’ve done my own research on social capital (when in ThesisLand) and I do not view it this way. Yes, it often is viewed and used as something “cashable” in online spaces, but it also often isn’t, particularly when there is learning involved within a community and THAT is what I’m all about.
So really, my opposition to this term is two-fold: 1) it’s an inaccurate (possibly even misappropriated) use of language, and 2) if we do think online identities are “cash” via social capital, then perhaps we’re thinking too narrowly.
…i don’t think social capital is in any way inevitably converted to cash. i think it is convertible, as a potentiality. but a potentiality that is game-changing and the reason that neither identity nor reputation suffice, as terms, to capture the meaning. i’d go with identity-in-circulation-within-digital-sociality except that’s too long and jargony to be usefully communicative.
i don’t buy the inaccuracy argument, though, Adrienne, particularly the gay example. teens saying “i don’t mean gay like that” are denying what the word signifies. whereas i’m pointing out that brand DOES signify an emerging concept of online identity, particularly as expressed in the corporatized personal branding jingoism. even The Wikipedia definition of brand you linked notes “The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity – it affects the personality of a product, company or service. A concept brand is a brand that is associated with an abstract concept, like breast cancer awareness or environmentalism, rather than a specific product, service, or business.” significations change over time: gay is a great example. i think we can agree that it would be inaccurate to apply it as solely a synonym for ‘happy.’
Bonnie, I agree with the base of what you are describing, and sure — perhaps it’s an “emerging concept” but I still do not see it defined that way in circles beyond academia (primarily research in media) and education. I *do* think that, like the “gay” example, many of us are denying what the word “brand” signifies. That’s the reason I linked to Wikipedia, etc.
I’m glad you mentioned the Wikipedia definition — “the personality of a product, company, or service.” I am none of these things, and I find any attempt to describe myself with these terms to be dehumanizing. Perhaps others don’t feel this way; perhaps others are comfortable defining themselves this way. I am not. I am more than any of those things because I am a whole person, whether online or offline. I am not a product, I am not a company, nor am I a service. I am a person.
Re: social capital argument — so just because of the potentiality of it being converted to cash, you think it appropriate to use the term “brand”? Am I understanding your argument properly? While that might be true in other contexts, as I stated above, I do not think that’s a strong enough argument for it to be applied in education communities, where the currency is not cash, but invaluable abstract concepts such as growth, learning, and understanding. I therefore feel that such a term has no legitimate place in authentic learning communities.
Adrienne, i fully agree that the currency in education is generally not cash, nor do i think it should be. though many educators who are big in social media ARE capitalizing on their reputation or brand, whatever you call it, with speaking gigs and invitations to write, etc. some of these convert directly to cash, some don’t. but overall the person’s reach as an educator is amplified and they benefit, not merely in terms of their own learning.
on signification: brand signifies far more than the first line of the Wikipedia article, which is why i quoted the second and third lines, about brand evolving to identity. if you accept one, you can’t just leave the rest out completely. i agree your argument has historical validity: it DID signify one thing. now it signifies more, and even your own proffered definitions acknowledge it. this shift doesn’t belong solely to education or academia, either: in business and marketing, the concept of personal branding is huge.
i think your final line about legitimate places in authentic learning communities is telling. my guess is you & i actually have similar educational goals and values, and similarly negative positions on the neoliberal models of corporatized education and personhood. but i work with cyborg theory, which is about hybridity and subversion, not wholeness and authenticity. you look to draw boundaries against the corporate and keep a pure space. i don’t believe such things are possible, and so i’m interested in what good can come of what i believe we’re already complicit in. 🙂
Re: educators capitalizing on their reputation/brand — sure, I’ve seen them. It’s one thing to “capitalize” authentically, it’s quite another to do it based solely on how you market yourself. The ones who focus more on the marketing than the authentic cultivation of self usually rub me the wrong way (shocker! hah).
Re: Wikipedia: The 2nd and third lines:
“A brand can take many forms, including a name, sign, symbol, color combination or slogan. The word branding began simply as a way to tell one person’s cattle from another by means of a hot iron stamp. A legally protected brand name is called a trademark. The word brand has continued to evolve to encompass identity – it affects the personality of a product, company or service.”
The definitions after that have to do with concept brands and then commodity brands.
I’m also none of these things. There is not much in any of those definitions alluding to anything human, unless you go with the figurative language — that is, the personification of products, companies, services in the section where it says brand affects the “personality of” these things. But that’s still not describing a person.
The people I know in business and marketing do not understand the term “personal branding” to mean what you are describing it as (“identity-in-circulation-within-digital-sociality”) — they understand this term to mean something representative of a good or service meant to be bought, traded, or sold. I’ve not done any qualitative or quantitative research on this, however (and don’t plan to), so I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here, even if I’m wholly skeptical.
I agree that we have similar educational goals and values (and I think this was apparent during our Twitter exchange, too). I also think it’s interesting that you perceive me as trying to draw boundaries against the corporate. I actually don’t actively do that, and I’ve never been completely “on the left” when it comes to how I envision educational systems. I believe there is a place for the corporate in learning spaces, but I don’t see learning spaces as being corporate ones. Perhaps that’s where the confusion is? Or perhaps I am more subconscious about apparent boundaries than I think I am… ? Of course I realize that our research and academic interests are different (I have never studied cyborg theory) but they intersect where “social” and “technology” meet, and perhaps that’s why we’re experiencing some dissonance in the way terms are being applied: we’re each looking at different potential outcomes. 🙂 (oh, and that’s not a bad thing! I think we both realize that already but still worth mentioning!)
Hi Adrienne
In your original comments on twitter you talked about the denotation of the word ‘brand’ and I read the links you posted.
I’m not sure that the concept(s) of the word is quite as clear cut as you make out, or that the lines between what is explicit or implied are necessarily black and white. Expanding my search to include ‘branding’ and ‘personal branding’ and the picture is less clear again.
In particular, definition #2 in your google link above, ‘a recognisable kind’, seems fairly inline with what most of us probably wish for in terms of our (teaching) philosophy, voice on twitter and so on. I don’t see the same level of ‘inaccuracy’ in the word that you do.
Perhaps if you could state what you draw as the denotation of ‘brand’, I would understand better. Hope this isn’t frustrating for you!
The term “branding” is both a verb (present participle of the infinitive “to brand”) and a gerund. You’re referring primarily to the gerund form (particularly when you say “personal branding”), so perhaps that’s where the confusion is. Again — a great argument for why we need a new term. I chose to look at the ROOT of the word, which is both a noun and a verb. When you examine the gerund form, I think that’s where the confusion lies. So perhaps “brand” means one thing but “personal branding” means something else? How confusing!
Re: definition #2 – “a recognizable kind” — of what??? of teacher? of educator? of person? so is a brand simply a label? I feel like referring to that specific definition has actually made its use less clear. Is your “personal branding” simply how you’re labelled as a teacher/person/mother/father/human?
What I draw as the denotation is what is linked above; I’m not sure what more needs to be clarified. Here are two specific examples (you said you read the links but here is the copy/paste):
“A brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service, or business.”
“trade name: a name given to a product or service
a recognizable kind; “there’s a new brand of hero in the movies now”; “what make of car is that?”
burn with a branding iron to indicate ownership; of animals
identification mark on skin, made by burning ”
There’s more at dictionary.com:
1. kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like: the best brand of coffee.
2. a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
3. a mark formerly put upon criminals with a hot iron.
4. any mark of disgrace; stigma.
5. branding iron.
6. a kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic: The movie was filled with slapstick—a brand of humor he did not find funny.
7. a burning or partly burned piece of wood.
None of the above definitions seem to apply to people — that is, real and complex human beings with emotions and families, fears and dreams. Unless we’re talking of the kind in Brave New World — easily categorized, marked, distinguished, and identifiable. Or, unless you’re talking about a person who is iconic, and has something to sell/market (e.g. celebrities — but even for them, I think most of use can discern between the brand and the person). I don’t envision being a part of either of these worlds (Huxley or celebrity-land) and so this is part of why I don’t see myself as a “brand.”
Hi Adrienne – I’m pretty much out of mental energy so I’m going to bow out now 😉
Bon verbalised many of my very loose ideas about this in a far more eloquent manner than I could. I hope that in a few years I’ll find a few more words and use them better!
Thanks for taking the time to exchange views with me. I like how outspoken, principled and intelligent you are in your posts which is why I started to follow you on twitter. That’s THREE things I like and I’m sure there will be others as I find out more. Earlier today, somewhere on the fire-hydrant of information that is the web, I read that a good brand should stand for only ONE thing – so perhaps people really don’t make good brands!
Incidentally, @janeinjava’s plan to create a ‘personal branding’ video seems to be taking shape on her blog. I just watched the draft: http://1to1inpractice.blogspot.com/
Wow, Tom – thank you so much for those compliments. I really appreciate the feedback. I’m always happy to exchange views when it comes to conversations like these; although we may disagree on the nuances, I do think it is an important conversation and I’ve enjoyed the back-and-forth. Thanks for pushing me. It’s often in the dissonance where the real learning occurs. I’m sensing a lot of dissonance, and so I hope that means we’re all learning — well, perhaps I will only speak for myself and say I know I am. This conversation has made me think differently about the way we use words and specifically jargon to define ourselves as educators and people. I’m uncomfortable with it, as you can probably tell, but hoping to find somewhere to settle in it all….
It is wonderful to have these types of discussions, because big ideas allows start with people hashing out the positives and negatives of where society is heading. It is all so true that the corporate lingo of branding has a seedy underbelly that must be considered, but we are marketing ourselves in some sense. This online version of ourselves is more than simply what people see on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog, the audiences perception of us is also a factor. The one-dimensionality of a brand is troubling, because as WM Chamberlain pointed out, people should change over time. Many things to ponder here, I think I found the big idea I’m be considering during the summer holiday in Europe as Aysem and I ride the trains.
I agree that words have meaning, and words like “brand” and “product” and “sell” have negative connotations for most teachers.
However, the meanings of words can, and often do, change.
If we as teachers, through well intentioned efforts at improving ourselves (ADE, Google Certified Teacher, et all…) end up using corporate language, so be it.
If we continue to do what we feel and know is right in education, the opportunities to not only explain, but also show the nuance of these words, we will be on our way to changing the negative connotation to a positive one.
I think using these words gives us teachers a great opportunity for us to enter into a dialogue with non-educators.
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Jabiz,
I think you nailed it here: “I realized that I am not creating a “brand” to “sell” to a “market.” I am sharing who I am, my identity with an audience.”
That sums up my feelings. Thanks for capturing these thoughts in long-form. Great conversation in the comments, too.
Jabiz,
I loved the ADE Institute and it will take me weeks to process all that I have gained.
The branding part has been the most challenging of all that I have had to do with the ADE program. Why? Because I am always holding the ‘mirror’ facing out to reflect others around me. I am so comfortable with that as I constantly work to support others and celebrate what other teachers and students are doing. However …. when the ‘mirror’ is turned around to reflect myself … that is much harder. It’s like when I catch myself in someone else’s Photobooth. My first reaction is ‘Crap! is that what I look like?’. The only way that I got through making my first branding video was to ‘Just do it’ and try to make something that reflected back what I am trying to do – make a difference to education in Indonesia – even just a small difference. You see for me I actually struggle with the whole technology thing – I happen to love the analog interface and the authentic learning experience but when I can get the two to combine and compliment each other – that’s the gold that I try to aim for 🙂
I know I’m late to the discussion here, but I just found your blog. I wonder if any of you have read Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle and considered its relevance to this discussion? I am actually just now reading it (which may be the only reason that I am seeing a connection) but see his discussion of commodity fetishism and the way that the language of the Spectacle overtakes all interaction to the point of commodification of the individual as something that is manifesting itself in this dialogue.
From Wikipedia: The spectacle is the inverted image of society in which relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people, in which “passive identification with the spectacle supplants genuine activity”. “The spectacle is not a collection of images,” Debord writes. “rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”
While he is referring to mass media as a social mediator, I think it is relevant in a discussion of Facebook, Twitter, and the idea of “branding” the individual.