was not meant for them,” and Mimi finished, stating; “It is crazy [that they trust Facebook
more]…”
Often when I asked my friends about these cases of flirtation, saying: “what did you mean
with this post?” Alternatively, “if it were meant for someone special,” the girls would giggle
and say; “yes, it´s this cute guy,” but never mention who he is. The boys would often toughen
up and avoid answering; “no, it’s nothing.” Some of the posts were also deleted after a while.
Dedan told me that he would go through his feed and delete these posts after some time, the
girl should have seen it already, and that he would prevent a potential new flirt from seeing it.
It is a big difference then, to talk about this out loud and to write online. Facebook is in some
ways used as a tool to communicate feelings or affection; even arguments and conflict would
happen online rather than in “real life.” One could then argue that the emotions are manifested
into expressed feelings in an online environment.
Lambert´s informants made him conclude as follow: “The way which Facebook mediated
people, combined with the way people embody and objectify themselves, sometimes leads to
a form of socio-ontological insecurity which favors the offline world as the site of the
‘real’.”(Lambert, 2013, p. 138). In his case, Facebook is described as a “false world reality”
you do not want to get too entangled in. This is, however, quite the opposite of what I was
experiencing. With my informants, Facebook provides a reality which sometimes feels more
real and open, or like Pemala described it; a free space. This does not, however, include
everyone, but the connection is there. Since Facebook does not, in this view, mediate people,
but instead offer a facility to carry out the conversation or perform the feeling. The internet, or
Facebook in this case, is no longer merely another tool that people use, but an environment
within which they operate and live, and therefore it would be natural that it is a place to
express feelings as well. (Benski & Fisher, p. 1)
Unni Wikan, while working in Bali, talked about resonance which can be explained as a
shared human experience. She writes that “Resonance demands something of both reader and
author… …a willingness on the part of both to engage whit another world, life, or
idea”(Wikan, 1990, p. 269). This argument can be transferred to the communication of
emotion expressed on Facebook amongst young adults in Yangon. In writing these particular
status up-dates, it would be an expectation of the other part to understand, to resonate with the
message. This then raise the question on privacy. How do people in Yangon interpret privacy?
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