Considering the results of this experiment together with the eth-nography in Balduíno, it became apparent that ‘knowing everyone’ did not mean having an active relationship of any kind with most of the other residents. I noted generally three categories of proximity. The most dis-tant was simply knowing someone ‘by sight’ (‘de vista’, that is, recognising them mainly in terms of common relationships); the next level of close-ness was between people who would greet one another as they met in the street;7 finally the closest connection was between people who enter one another’s homes. The final group are thus strongly connected and a more active part of each other’s support networks.8
However, as I discuss later in this chapter, the settlement does not correspond to a single network. Local relationships are dynamic and constantly being re- negotiated, so two people who were once close asso-ciates might now ignore each other on the street. At times this may be the result of a dispute leading to a relationship breakdown, but more commonly this now happens because one of them has joined an evan-gelical church, and thus stopped socialising in bars or attending events that involve consuming alcohol; essentially he or she no longer wishes to be seen as being on friendly terms with someone who is not also bap-tised.9 Greeting is therefore a traditional form of displaying and publicly acknowledging closeness in the region, but speaking or not speaking to each other does not necessarily reflect the level of knowledge that people have about others.
This brief introduction helps to consider the criteria which young people in the settlement use to decide who to add as ‘friends’ on their social media. The category of ‘knowing by sight’ is particularly important in understanding why many local users regularly add people from distant places whom they have never talked with, seen or met before – and yet these contacts are not viewed as strangers.
Adding mutual friends
As in other places and socioeconomic contexts,10 most teen agers in Balduíno believe that having a great number of ‘friends’ on social media reflects positively on their popularity. Consequently using social media is often talked about with excitement, but it also demands an ongoing engagement: this is a serious matter to them. For exam-ple, a mother told me that her 13- year- old son begged her to ‘do like the other mums’ and punish him with beatings, rather than forbid him from using Facebook. Talking to these local teenagers,
I often had the impression that being on Facebook for them was an obligation similar to working; it consumed time and effort, had to take place regularly and included particular aims, but in exchange produced a certain value that they could use to measure personal prestige. Similarly to people in an office job, they stare at a screen and may struggle with pressures to perform. In Balduíno, one of the consequences that shows teenagers’ efforts to outperform others in gaining online friends and popularity is to be temporarily suspended from sending friendship requests on Facebook. This is an automatic restriction imposed on users who send large numbers of requests, many of which are denied. However, teens often talk about these sus-pensions with an underlying sense of pride. For them the punishment illustrates their dedication to social media – and also suggests that they have access to a private computer, to be able to spend so many hours online.
Wellington is one of these teenagers. Aged 17, he lives with his mother and a younger brother in an area relatively distant from the settlement’s centre – which reflects the limited income of his fam-ily. He goes to school in the morning and works in the afternoon at a local printing shop. This does not pay very much, but is nevertheless a valued job, as it allows him to be near and have occasional access to social media during working hours. Though obviously enthusiastic about computers and the internet, Wellington does not demonstrate this excitement by talking about a video he saw online, content he downloaded or the friends he has made around the world. Instead he constantly mentions numbers to demonstrate his success online.
He has over 2,000 friends and most nights (after pretending to go to bed so that his mother then falls asleep) he socialises on Facebook until it is time for him to go to school. He is proudest of the number of online friends that are active at night – a high number, proportional to the number of his Facebook friends. Between 8 pm and midnight, for example, ‘over one hundred people’(!) are simultaneously connected and available to chat with him. Rather than enjoying the conversa-tions he has online, Wellington refers to the experience of daily chat-ting with his online contacts as a difficult task to be accomplished. ‘It’s tough! I can barely speak to so many people at once!’ His computer screen during these hours shows many chat windows open. However, unless he is talking with a potential romantic partner or with a close associate, the conversations themselves seem mechanical. Wellington does not know most of his online friends personally, and his aim is to carry out as many chat exchanges as possible.
Social Media in eMergent Brazil 106
In the settlement there is the category of knowing someone ‘by sight’, presented in relation to shared connections. On social media, this level corresponds to having mutual online ‘friends’. Local teenagers do not have any problem with adding people they have never seen or talked with before. Also, in a similar fashion to the face- to- face version, know-ing someone ‘by sight’ on Facebook is a category of relationship that can entail, but that often does not demand, specific behaviour, such as hav-ing to greet each other online. It is generally good enough to be able to exhibit these contacts as ‘friends’ on their Facebook profile, and also to use them to add new contacts.
However, social media becomes more complicated if it involves local relationships. When it comes to ‘friending’ locally, there are obvi-ously the peers with whom the young people already hang out, and it is expected that they will use social media to communicate with each other.
But then there are other locals whom they know only ‘by sight’. Being online allows individuals to reach out to these distant contacts and con-nect to them, with a degree of privacy that was less available in the past.
But while sending a friendship request to someone outside the settle-ment does not make that an active/ participant relationship, locals who receive friendship requests from other locals often interpret it as an act of greeting. Their expectations about future interactions are raised accord-ingly. Those sending the requests find it considerably more simple and less painful than approaching offline the person they already know ‘by sight’ and asking if she or he wants to be friends.
If the other person accepts the online request, there are basically two common outcomes. Some informants report that the newly opened channel of communication is followed by an awkward silence. Others explain that the new relationship takes off online: the two actively like each other’s postings, leave comments and, above all, greet and chat constantly when they notice that the other is online. The problem arrives when these two people meet each other on the street. Both expect to be greeted (as they now have a new level of closeness), but both become afraid of the other person ‘turning the head away’ (virar a cara). Such a rejection is seen as a public embarrassment, as the rejected individual will be ridiculed and made fun of by his or her associates.
This common situation – waiting to be greeted before reciprocating – tends to produce bitter feelings in the person that received the request. As the expected ‘friendship’ fails to blossom offline, locals commonly interpret the friendship request as a trick by the other person. They believe it was made to gain access to their postings and online activities, and consequently to spy on and gossip about them.