In social networks, can the action between interacting figures be compared to the same dynamic that exists between choir and protagonist, in Greek theater?
Bizarre to approach an element that wants to be, in the intentions of those who create & use it, simply playful or an active tool to connect common interests, such as a social network - today there are some for every need - with an element like the figures of Greek theater, but the approach is not so risky. For a definition of chorus, we turn to D'Amico, who speaks thus: ”(the chorus) not a cold exhibitor, but moved and lyrical; who ideally participates in what is happening on the stage, and comments on it, and admonishes ... even going so far as to threaten an intervention in the events on stage. "
The social function is designed to ensure that the user who voluntarily submits to the netiquette proposed and specified for each social network (here reference is made to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.) can use a platform that connects him to others. Therefore, the need to socialize, the need to interact, to combat loneliness and lack of specific identity. Connecting to the Other with a capital A, in Lacan's definition.
The connection between multiple 'Other' starts from the instance that: “the subject is immersed in the structure, he is immersed in the structure, which predetermines him, which passes through him, a structure that Lacan calls Other. Lacan's Other is the field of language, within whose laws the subject is caught. It is a representation that is necessary for him to demonstrate man's dependence on structure, on culture. (Lacan and structuralism, Francesco Albanese, http://www.gianfrancobertagni.it/materiali/psiche/albanese.htm)
The social networks therefore become, 'make culture in the interaction between phonemic and iconic users, but what kind of exchange is there in the social networks? Beyond the specific contents of each post, what do you really say to others about yourself?
Certainly not the simple porn food or the country festival that returns in vogue, beyond this phenomenologizing the most personal and intimate events 'posting them', what need is there to advertise one's life in every aspect, transitory or permanent?
What is the mechanism that triggers, beyond Maslow's scale of needs, revisited by recent sociology studies, which makes everyone visible but also, and here the curiosity of this article arises, which can be commented on, subjected to the attention of others , but also to their evaluation. Of course, the answers given to the posts are full of opinions but still full of personal experiences.
Here, then, with a post, only one, the needs to be followed and to please are assured.
Needs such as: "Self-esteem: I can choose" friends ", but others can do it too. For this reason, if many choose me as a "friend", then "I'm worth"; and last but not least: "Self-realization needs: I can tell something about myself (where I am and what I do) as I want and I can use my skills to help some of my" friends "who listen to me." (1), the latter that do not remain without echo, on the contrary, they are fortified by it.
More 'like' more self-esteem, more contacts, more self-assertion.
Beyond mere contact, encouraged to find soul mates, comments on all kinds of fun, or to look for work, the lives of others are commented, knowing perfectly well that one's own will be under the judgment of others.
Certainly there is an agreement in affirming that in the social sector every individual shows off himself, he shows off the Person, in the sense of a consciously worn mask.
And that social media is therefore the new 2.0 narcissistic mirror?
But mirroring is often dangerous, as happened to Narcissus.
Write a post, wait for someone to answer, something else to put 'like', one to ignore.
The Other can read, enter the life of the subject who posts a content and then comment.
So I'm comment?
Yes, in an absolute and absolutist way.
Absolute: because whoever responds feels able to have understood the original post, even if as often as Umberto Eco said, he only replies with 'bar sports' comments, that is a superficiality that borders on indifference for those who posted first, because the important action is to be there in the answer, to be in the 'like' or in the 'dislike'. It doesn't matter if you have posted the uncle's pneumonia or the formula to repair the hole in the atmosphere, it's important that someone 'out there' answer me!
Absolutistically: because the one who answers feels powerful.
The power of a judge, the power of those who know more now in the immediate reading of the post, the power of being there at that moment. The power to always comment.
But the assurance of responding to a post as it is perceived by the first one who posted?
Here is the parallel to explain the relationships between users with the aesthetic categories of Greek theater and specifically the use of the choir.
Aristotle, in 'Poetics', defines the chorus 'as ... one of the protagonists'. In the sociological and psychological field it can already be said, despite the few studies present, that, especially teenagers, they seem to take into high consideration the comments (which are turn into judgments / sentences) that are inflicted on them because they are sent by their peers on the sidelines of each of their posts.
So from coreuti you become an alternate and confused protagonist.
The proto-agonist-first competitor - is the first to post and then cascade the "deuteragonist" and "tritagonist", sometimes to infinity!
However, the choir often provides a solution in the theater, a different point of view, makes the protagonist grow and respects his role of 'helping' the hero.
In social media this does not seem to happen. There is no place for real support, a true listening.
A shapeless mass that participates with the guts and without a heart in the post, and even if there was a follower who is there to establish a sincere relationship with the other, he will still be confused, suffused by the mass of the group that responds.
The group that responds to the first protagonist, the chorus in short, in every social network that you choose, is not the group that: "" is a 'given situation', which from the Gestalt point of view we can define as a continuous creation of contact boundaries that differ from a background. […] The background of the group gives meaning to the events / figures. At the same time, the way of being of the members of the group creates the vitality, the quality of the presence, and therefore the spontaneity or otherwise with which the life of the group goes through its phases "(http://www.gestalt.it/gestaltpedia/doku.php?id=gruppo).
In social networks, the group of people who respond to the post is at first judgmental / commentator, fulfilling the function of Other Lacanian, Freudian Super Ego, and then moving on to the second phase, that of influencing behavior and reactions. These chain reactions affect the first subject and with him whoever has responded, in the way they dress, act, react and think, in the non-virtual world.
And in 'being a group', being a 'choir' that each individual finds power, strengthening trust or distrust in those who first posted a content and as in a fluid makes everyone equidistant from the central post and therefore everyone can be influenced by everyone. Is this influence morally correct? Or does it correspond to the exposition of ethical concepts as valid as a returnable void of the soul?
That is, is answering always correct? Aware? Help? Or does it serve simply to be for the umpteenth answer, an incurable narcissus?
Will the will to be there exceed that of being present for the other?
Does the chorus in the social network, or rather answering everyone and everyone, does a useful work of growth for those who post to you?
Or does it remain an emptiness to bend one's own too solipsistic prospects?
Netiquette has no morals, no ethical principles, but only useful education.
The protagonist who poses demonstrates a will, the choir / group responds with the demonstration of elements that are insincerely moral, aesthetic, political or in contrast or in agreement, just as the Greek choir responded to the hero. Insincere because you are still undercover, you are a person, you are choreutized, you are not an individual.
The choir demonstrates in Greek theater its usefulness to counteract what the protagonist exhibits, it is then sometimes the voice of the author of the tragedy or comedy that thus expressed his own poetic and ethical point of view. This necessarily bound him to be sincere and present, critical but never deconstructing.
In social media, anyone shows their own point of view, but deprives the group / choir of the ethical depth of the choir / group itself.
According to the concepts of the Gestalt: ". Individual and group are not two distinct realities ”(Spagnuolo Lobb, 2011, p. 232). And also: “The history of the group is a history of intentionality of contact and of the support that they receive in the various evolutionary moments” (Spagnuolo Lobb, 2012, p. 56).
Following this Gestaltic thought, is the individual in social media really distinguishable from the group? And is the group supportive?
It will be considered, against the present thesis, that in social media we are looking for fun, not deepening, having such an illusion would be foolish, but who is certain that instead in one's own depth in social networks one does not look for a deepening to know oneself better, even through others?
The identification Perls talks about here: "I am convinced that in the group laboratory you can learn a great deal already by understanding what is happening inside another person, and realizing that many of his conflicts are also his own, and by identification you learn. (Perls, 1980, p. 9) is made in vain as no one in the social network learns something about himself from the other! Instead, it is influenced and not in a positive way, in growth but in regression to primordial needs, which in the worst case become bullying or worse (eg racial or religious) aggressions. In contrast to Perls's theory, in social networks one does not learn to identification 'to know oneself better, but narcissism only reigns, being able to say everything to everyone in an unprecedented emotional anarchy.
by Silvana Mangano, philosophical counselor