Two recent entries on danah boyd's blog have gotten me thinking about the relationship between democracy, virtuosity, and narcissism in online social networks. The latter of these two entries addresses the recent flare up over Facebook.com's alleged (and disputed) banning of an "Arban LGBT" group, and the former revisits the connection between narcissism and the generation currently in their teens to mid-twenties (I fall within this range and have written on the topic of narcissism before as well).

Paolo Virno, perhaps best in A Grammar of the Multitude, writes about the concept of virtuosity and its connection to affective labor and a shift toward a new type of politics. Virtuosity, to perhaps over-simplify, is the creation of value in the process of production itself. To draw upon the familiar root of the word as an example, an expert pianist experienced on stage holds a higher value than that same pianist experienced through a CD. The act of performance in this case, is an act of virtuosity. The very same concept can easily be applied to production within online social networks: the value in the act of "friending" someone, for instance, is not in the pixelated real estate it occupies on one's profile, but rather the message this act sends when experienced by others. This can be extended to most aspects of subjective construction within these environments. The page itself hold little or no value, whereas the affect produced in its creation is ultimately the aim of the labor.

Virno and others, such as Ned Rossiter in his book Organized Networks for one, see this type of networked affective/creative labor as implying a new, post-democratic (or, even, a hyper-democratic) politics. Yet, at least within online environments, has this shift not been made possible by this alleged, rampant narcissism? If the users of social networks like Facebook were not so focused on the careful construction of their online personae, we would likely not see them flourish - with the maligned LGBT group as an example of their success. It seems that perhaps Virno's idea of virtuosity has found an ally in my generation's supposed masturbatory self-interest. Inflated self-esteem has perhaps led to a world in which affective labor and subjective production have gained increased status in relation to tradtional forms of labor.

Collaborative or navel-gazing? Masturbatory or communal? Perhaps these are no loinger disparate concepts in a space reaching toward a post-democratic, virtuosic politics.