Conclusion

In a mobile world in which people face nebulous contingencies in their efforts to sustain important relationships, a service such as Facebook capitalises on a growing need for intimacy. People make use of Facebook’s bounded publics to perform their connections and reproduce the intimacy therein. However, Facebook also puts intimacy at risk. The pressure to capitalise on social connections from various situations in life and with various ‘degrees’ of intimacy can cause the accumulation of heterogeneous personal networks. The public spaces which result endanger the capacity for Facebook to positively service interpersonal intimacy. On the one hand, this doubles and dispossesses the intimate self and demands that intimacy be carefully controlled. On the other hand, it mediates people and potentially alienates and objectifies them. This threatens the interpersonal recognition which they desire, producing a looming state of socio-ontological insecurity. In order to assuage this insecurity, people mobilise intimacy, carefully targeting the interpersonal fabric which binds them to those who matter.