When Facebook first began gaining traction — when it was not many years from its original policy of being limited to students at elite universities — danah boyd characterized its popularity as white flight, a kind of digital suburbanization. “Those who deserted MySpace did so by ‘choice,’” she noted, “but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.” I grew up in a more or less all-white suburb, and as I got older I came to wonder how I ended up there and how things might have been different. It’s not that I blamed my parents for it or felt hard done by — I had the luxury of being bored most of the time and felt I could test out risky behavior on my own terms with little chance of facing real consequences. But eventually I began to notice how my horizons had been narrowed by that environment’s particular sense of freedom.
A Profile and a Location
A Profile and a Location
A Profile and a Location
When Facebook first began gaining traction — when it was not many years from its original policy of being limited to students at elite universities — danah boyd characterized its popularity as white flight, a kind of digital suburbanization. “Those who deserted MySpace did so by ‘choice,’” she noted, “but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.” I grew up in a more or less all-white suburb, and as I got older I came to wonder how I ended up there and how things might have been different. It’s not that I blamed my parents for it or felt hard done by — I had the luxury of being bored most of the time and felt I could test out risky behavior on my own terms with little chance of facing real consequences. But eventually I began to notice how my horizons had been narrowed by that environment’s particular sense of freedom.