Youth, gender, and digitally policed corporate credibility: The ballad of "Abby Farle"

Responses to Chick-Fil-A’s statement affirming their condemnation of gay marriage has been widely variable, with many, including Jim Hensen’s Muppets, chastising the company for intolerance. But this is not the stance of Facebook’s “Abby Farle.” Farle expressed her support of Chick-Fil-A’s adherence to “Biblical principles” in comment threads on the company’s Facebook page, and asserted that the restaurant’s distancing from Muppets products had nothing to do with the recent fall-out. “Abby” quoted a Bible passage in her defense of the company, and threw in the common kid web-slang “derr” to punctuate and contextualize her statement.

Other commenters replied by called out “Abby Farle” as being a front for Chick-Fil-A public relations, noting that “her” account was set up minutes before “her” posting, and that “her” picture was from shutterstock.com, a company that sells stock photos. “Abby” has since discontinued her account. Though run by men, it appears that some believe Chick-fil-A's public relations office have taken a bit too literal of an approach to their name in social media forums this time around.

The impressions of people considered experts are given considerable clout when gauging the quality of information. These peoples’ thoughts on subjects can be seen as particularly insightful, important, and meaningful. They bring unique and hard-to-challenge knowledge and perspective to a discussion. The "expert" takes on many forms, with some being book smart, some street smart. Others are knowing in other ways.

While females are rarely considered experts in media, when we're talking virtue and goodness, they are historically summoned to symbolize and to police societal propriety, tradition, and family. This is particularly the case for white girls, who can be interchangeably used as symbols of purity and of corruption. In new media, white girls are regularly used to paint pictures of social ineptitude, weakness, stupidity, and vacuous waste, taking this cultural work away from the "dumb blonde." They are also forwarded as gold standard experts when it comes to representing virginal wholesomeness.

In this case, a fast food restaurant hoping to appear "aw shucks" down-homey and family-minded might be well-served and highly strategic choosing to channel its messaging through the image of someone who embodies wholesomeness and family-mindedness. While age, education, and a lack of buy-in to the smarmy get-ahead ethos that bounds public relations and many other spaces within the adult world will keep them out of Chick-fil-A spokesperson positions, the white girl doesn't need to take these jobs to be spoken through online. Lacking sentience and subjectivity, she can be compiled entirely of stock photos and short sentences and glib slang. She does not have or need agency. She is a tool owned by others. She can work for them. She can exist for them. Objectification enters the digital era.

I wonder if "Abby Farle"'s messages would have been read as springing as much from traditional values and purity if they had been offered by a boy? By a black girl? By a Latino male? By an Asian woman? A white southern Baptist preacher? I don't think so. As any PR maven knows, the messaging matters. How you present an idea has even more sway than what you say in it (see Reagan campaign, 1984, Bernays, Herman & Chomsky, Stuart Hall's Encoding/Decoding, and more). Comment boards and gaming forums are rife with names nodding to certain identities, and thus socially signaling much more than what they simply write and do. A young white girl summoning Biblical verses in defense of "traditional" beliefs holds certain clout that the others just don't have. Why? Because of how we raise our kids in our culture. Because of how we think of kids in our culture. Because how we understand girls in our culture. Because of how race matters in our culture.

While the ability for cloaked messaging -- or "sock puppeting" -- through social media raises some serious credibility and trust issues that impact information quality in the digital age, this instance again reminds us that race, age, and gender matter a whole heck of a lot in understanding technology as part of new media and society. Information offered in online spaces is disembodied and distanced from the social identity of its source, but it is not neutral. Rather, it commonly relies on familiar analog identity heuristics for framing and contextualization, as well as for spiking it with cultural codes and meaning.

Following up on Lisa Nakamura's badass work, the adage still holds; while nobody knows you're a dog online, if you post as a dog, readers will be more likely to trust your views on topics related to bones.

Messaging matters. Though girls are commonly considered socially impotent in US society, in new media spaces where anonymity is the norm, the "white girl," as cultural message, can be very productive indeed.