Examining the Social Networks in Insecure
In HBO’s series Insecure, we can explore how the relationships between the characters demonstrate the effects of social networks. As demonstrated in Figure 1, Issa, the main character has a group of mutual friends who all hang out together. Issa’s main group of friends are Molly, Tiffany, and Kelli but their circle expands to include their partners as well. Before things get complicated, Issa’s boyfriend Lawrence becomes a part of this group and adopts her friends. Tiffany’s husband Derek also becomes friends with the rest of the group and eventually best friends with Lawrence. Throughout the series, Lawrence and Derek remain weak ties to the rest of the girls, not including their own partners, and eventually become strong ties together as they were the lone weak ties. Issa’s circle of friends officially becomes a complete graph where all pairs of nodes are linked by edges.
Figure 1
This social network displayed on Insecure demonstrates the Strong Triadic Closure Property (STCP), which states that if a node has strong ties to two neighbors, then these neighbors must have at least a weak tie between them. The two partners, Lawrence and Derek become weak ties to the rest of the girls because their partners hold both strong ties with them and their girlfriends Kelli and Molly. If for some reason, Issa or Tiffany decided to keep their romantic partners away from the rest of the group, then we would see some sort of strange friendship that violates the STCP.
Figure 3
Midway through the first season, Lawrence and Issa have a terrible breakup but they all remain ties to one another and he grows even closer to Derek despite having such a negative relationship with Issa. Here we begin to see where tensions begin to grow heavy within the group because of the negative link between Lawrence and Issa. Lawrence and Issa left on such bad terms that throughout the entire season two they are officially enemies of one another. With Issa’s social network being a complete graph and with her relationship with Lawrence on the edge, we can analyze the positive and negative links in this graph pictured in Figure 2. In the penultimate episode, well after Issa and Lawrence have been separated we truly see how divided they have become. Lawrence starts dating a co-worker, Aparna, and further disrupts their social network by bringing her to Derek’s birthday party. As pictured in Figure 3, Aparna becomes a bridge to this once complete graph with a direct connection of Lawrence, which ultimately defies the STCP once Lawrence tries to get out of the friend zone with Aparna and start dating her. If Lawrence dates Aparna that would completely contradict our assumption that he can satisfy STCP since Aparna would not have any connection to any other node, or person, in Issa’s circle.
Figure 2
When Lawrence brings Aparna to Derek’s birthday party, he shakes Issa’s entire social network by then introducing an outsider to their already complete friendship (graph). Lawrence committed the biggest party foul by bringing Aparna to a party that included all of Issa’s friends, I mean she’s the one who introduced everyone to Lawrence anyway. Naturally, Aparna became everyone’s enemy although she was innocent to this already chaotic situation. Since no one necessarily hated Lawrence…yet, the relationship between Lawrence, Issa, and the rest of her friends demonstrated how a once balanced relationship can quickly become unbalanced. According to the Structural Balance Theory (SBT), a triangle is balanced if everyone is friends or if there are all positive links, or if there is a mutual enemy between the links. The complete graph of friends is no longer balanced because the link between Lawrence and Issa becomes negative while he still has a positive link between himself and the other members for the time being. This negativity adds stress to the group of friends and creates awkward situations that they can no longer avoid.
Looking at the Insecure characters through the idea of social networks gives us insight into what happens when relationships change between the characters. Throughout the show, we can see how negatively Issa and Lawrence’s characters impact the others and create a stressful situation for all because of their unbalanced relationships. With this in mind, we can predict how the characters’ relationships might evolve for better or for worse.
http://www.9news.com/entertainment/entertainment-tonight/insecure-issa-and-lawrence-finally-face-off-during-a-friends-party/470649701