After asking my friend to rate his Facebook profile and reviewing it myself, I have come to the conclusion that he is trying to portray his ideal self. Therefore, his Facebook profile is laden with inaccuracies; which does not surprise me since Facebook is the perfect medium for identity-based digital deception. It is also important to note, although he deceives frequently throughout his profile, the magnitude of the deception is not that great, since they are essentially "variations" of the truth, instead of blatant irrefutable lies.
We started with his profile picture which he rated as a 4 and I agree. His current profile picture is him wearing a suit and tie, which I think is a combination of his ideal self and his true self. It is ideal because he strives to be a successful business person. Yet, at the same time it is his true self because he has always been a motivated person with a focus on his profession but one couldn’t take him seriously when he wore wrinkled polo shirts, a fitted hat, sagging jeans, and Timberlands. Basically, it is not his actual self because most likely if you saw him walking down the street or even on his way to work, he would not be wearing a suit.
Next, he rated his tagged photos as a 4. Interestingly enough, he is one of the few people I know that does not untag his photos. His pictures range from his younger partying years, to his educational trip to Japan, and to time spent with his family. The only reason I believe that his tagged photos are deceiving is because it doesn’t portray his actual self, since those are not qualities he expresses at present. By looking at his tagged pictures, you would think that he goes out to party a lot more than he currently does; now that he’s matured and has a serious long-term girlfriend he tends to shy away from the “party scene.”
He rated his basic info as a 5, which is lie. Part of your basic information is your hometown. He displayed Red Lake Indian Reservation, which he lived about 2 years of his adolescent life, but he grew up for 18+ years in Chapel Hill, NC. I believe he utilized the social associations as a self-presentational tactic. He is trying to associate himself with his Native American heritage, because his culture is important to him and most people mistake him for Latino.
He rated his personal information, which included “Activities,” “Interests,” “Favorite Books,” “Favorite Quotes,” and “About Me,” between a four and a five. Once again he utilized social associations, by filling his quotes section with Native American proverbs and by quoting Emerson which would suggest that he is philosophical and educated (which is an over-attribution of his personality based on limited information). He used his “About Me” section to utilize the self description, which is another self-presentational tactic. Once again he took this opportunity to present his ideal self; he stated characteristics that he was trying to achieve (i.e. “Trying to live with respect to life”).
His education and work information is accurate, which he confirmed with his rating of a 5. I believe this is true because it is a lot more costly to deceive people about your education and work. Lying about education and work information is a much greater magnitude than fluffying about your favorite book or TV show.
Lastly, he rated his wall a 1. I decided to add the wall aspect of Facebook because it adds an interesting dynamic. Although, he does not write the messages on his own wall, he monitors it since he has the ability to delete entries or disable the wall all together. I feel that Facebook’s wall demonstrates the ought self. In society, especially because of online tools such as Facebook, people feel that they should have a lot of friends. Facebook takes it one step further, not only is it important to have a lot of friends but to truly show that you are popular and loved, you need to have sufficient wall posts. Although his wall is packed full of posts, none of the people who write on his wall are truly his friends. Most of them are old partying buddies and he rarely or never returns their messages. Let me make myself clear, it is not that he does not have friends but it’s the fact that his true friends rarely post on his wall because they usually call or talk to him in person. So why does he keep the posts on his wall? It could be sheer laziness or it could be the social pressure to have a bunch of meaningless wall posts on your Facebook page.
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3 comments:
You have done a great job analyzing each element of his survey response in detail. I agree with your classifications pertaining to the ideal, ought, and true self.
It is interesting that he rated his wall as “least accurate,” since I would consider it an assessment signal (and thus hard to fake). It is difficult to give off the impression that you are popular if nobody else wants to post on your wall – there is not much that you can do about it. The rest of the facebook elements (personal info, basic info, photo, etc.) are conventional signals. They can easily be twisted to create a certain impression.
It would be nice to think about how social distance theory, MRT, and the feature-based model stack up against your facebook analysis.
Thea,
While reading your blog I agree that your friend was portraying his “ideal self”, but along with his “actual self”. The areas you choice to base your assignment on such as profile picture, wall posts, basic information, and interests/“about me”/etc. were good to base your research on. I completely agreed with what you said regarding wall posts, pictures posted, and educational information. However, there were some situations that I slightly disagree with you on such as his profile picture, basic information, and interest/quotes/etc.
Regarding the elements you analyzed your friend on your friend’s profile picture, maybe the picture he posted up isn’t him being his ideal self but actually him portraying his ought self: since he is at such a school (assuming he goes to Cornell), and like how you said he is maturing since he has a serious girlfriend he may think he should portray himself in such a manner oppose to having a picture of him at some party.
Concerning your friend’s basic information: I feel like he could have simply misinterpreted what a “hometown” is and or thinks that “hometown” is the place where he was born. Or you could be completely on the money, and he is just trying to associate himself with his Native American heritage.
Lastly, regards to what you observed with what your friend put in his interests and “about me” sections it sounds like he is proud of his heritage and wants to show that and that he is not necessarily portraying his “ideal self”. I know people would not know my heritage unless I blatantly told people, like what your friend did, which simply explains my “actual self” (this fact cannot be changed).
Some clarification is necessary. I believe you are referring to the line:
Once again he took this opportunity to present his ideal self; he stated characteristics that he was trying to achieve (i.e. “Trying to live with respect to life”).
You commented that I said being Native American is an ideal self, which of course would not make any sense. Instead, I was referring to the specific description that he put up in his "about me" (the proverbs were under the "quotes section) Since he put "trying" that suggests that he isn't already there, and that there is something he is striving for.
The Native American proverbs were described as a self-presentational tactic via social association. I understand after looking over the paragraph again, that this information was not perfectly clear so I wanted to clarify.
Thank you for your comments.
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