You are in the midst of your mundane morning commute and suddenly you find yourself engulfed in the bright lit screen of your smart phone. No, you’re not reading the news, or even checking work emails, but instead you find yourself “lurking” on Facebook, perhaps glazing over the “Timeline” of some random girl you “used to know” from high school. You’re not truly friends with this person nor have you engaged in direct communication with her in six years but yet you’re intrigued to “stalk” her for a moment or two. Perhaps it’s her recent engagement photos that piqued your interest or maybe you're curious if her fiancé is hot or just an "average Joe”. Regardless, we often gravitate towards this voyeuristic activity because it’s easily accessible entertainment.
In the 1970’s a wave of feminist film theorists like Laura Mulvey drew from Freud and Lacan’s psychoanalytic concepts concerning the erotic pleasure experienced by the act of “looking” and related this "visual pleasure" to the dominance of the “male gaze” in the cinematic art form. Personally, I believe regardless of whether the act of “looking” achieves sexual excitement, the voyeuristic intrigue of “watching” is a crucial cornerstone in which the various mediums of art, entertainment, and media have been built upon from the beginning of civilization.
From the roar of audiences cheering on gladiators as they fight to their death at the Roman colosseum to Hollywood's “Golden Age”, human beings are inherently drawn to spectatorship. Today with various social media channels and digital content readily available within seconds, we're constantly participating in an active state of spectatorship as well as exhibitionism, as we provide a window into our personal lives through various social media platforms. In a way individuals can achieve a particular status distinction within the social stratification of their own network depending on the popularity of one's account.
When reality television gained momentum in the late-90’s/early 2000’s, the line between reality and performance became irreversibly blurred. As platforms such as Facebook gained as many users and thus viewers as traditional mass media, a similar ambiguity between reality and the façade of reality began to permeate into the seemingly more “personal” channels of social media.
And yes, perhaps we enjoy being spectators but I encourage you to truly ask yourself—do you also enjoy being the “performer”, the subject of one’s private gaze, an exhibitionist merely used for cheap reality TV entertainment by Facebook “friends” or even strangers?