ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the results of a long-term ethnographic research about the uses of social media carried out in Mardin, a medium-sized town in south-east Turkey, inhabited by a population of Arabs and Kurds. It argues that teenagers and young adults publicly display their locations on Facebook to increase popularity and fame among friends, relatives, and peers. Locative functions are widely used to show off the presence of a rich and wealthy social life, regardless of whether the location is real or not: pictures of holiday trips, meals at restaurants, and shopping malls are often displayed on Facebook walls, together with the location of the place. The chapter regards the public display of location and fake location as entangled with desires of visibility, social affirmation, and fame.
