Sunday, September 16, 2007
assignment number 4, option 2
After asking my friend about her facebook profile and seeing other people’s profiles, I came to realize that many people do not lie about their interests, hometown, activities, relationship status etc. Lots of my friends joke about being “in a relationship” with their best friend, or “married” to their housemate, but it is all in good fun and not meaning to be deceiving. The facebook profile I decided to assess was 100% honest. My friend passed Catalina’s scale test with flying colors, giving herself all fives. “Why would I lie about my interests and music taste?”, she asked me after I was done quizzing her about how honest she actually was. This was a good point and I told her that it probably happens more on dating website profiles than on facebook. Since I live with the girl I interviewed, I know her well and was able to verify that she did in fact like the movies and tv shows and music she put down. She is in a relationship with a kid who goes to Hobart College. It says this under her “relationship status”. She is clearly not in the market for a boyfriend and so this makes it publicly known who she is dating and where he is from. From the theory standpoint, this does not really support any of the theories we learned about in class. People do not usually lie on facebook, but they just simply leave things out. For example, you have this weird obsession with pogs, but if they are not cool or hip at the time, chances are you will not put it down under interests. You are not lying, you are just not telling the whole truth. If there was a height and weight section, I bet many people would leave it blank, unless your height and/or weight was ideal and you wanted to brag about it. So the whole O’Sullivan and Media Richness Theories are not really appropriate for this situation because they talk about where people lie most and being efficient vs. not being efficient. A facebook account is something which can be changed and is not permanent. This means that people may take chances to see if saying a certain thing is working and getting people’s attention in a positive way. If they don’t get good feedback, a simple click of the mouse will take it away forever. This creates more of a conducive environment for lying and being sneaky with what you say and how you say it. The rich vs lean media comes into play and causes the atmosphere of facebook to be casual and easy to lie on. This being said, it is interesting that more people don’t lie about themselves and their habits. It is probably because people who you are friends with on facebook see you often and so you would not be able to get away with much. It is such a small world that eventually, no matter what you say or do, it always comes back to get you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
“A facebook account is something which can be changed and is not permanent. This means that people may take chances to see if saying a certain thing is working and getting people’s attention in a positive way.”
I had the same general findings in assignment 4 option 2 also. My friend didn’t lie about anything and she only gave herself a “4” because there was some outdated information under Activities that she had forgotten to take out of her profile. In my discussion though, I considered facebook recorded and not recordless. I can definitely see that people change it frequently and may do that to try and get peoples attention but I also saw it as a website that can be recorded. We mentioned in class about the internet history, snapshots in time of how website were at a point in the past. I don’t know why someone would, but if you were to take a screenshot of someone’s facebook page then that page is recorded. The digital world seems to be constantly changing but it is sometimes complicated to identify what things in the digital world are unchanging.
Kathryn,
I think that you bring up an excellent point when you mention how your friend asked "why would i lie about my interests and music taste". It is true that such aspects appear to be rather trivial. However, when something more personal is brought in like weight and height, one can almost be sure that a lot of fudging of the numbers would occur. I think that this has a lot to do with the degree at which an individual is comfortable self-presenting. Like you said, a person who is interested in pogs might not be inclined to post that on Facebook for all to see if they think that presenting such information might make them the target of ridicule. Thus, to me I feel like perception is everything. People use omissions on Facebook in order to preserve certain perceptions that their "friends" have of them.In addition, there is also that accountability factor, where what is presented in one's profile can and will be easily verified by one's friends in the Facebook community. I recall when the Mini-feed first came out and people were really on top of the happenings of their friends. Thus, if you listed yourself as in a relationship,more often than not individuals expect that it is true. Because to many "it's not real unless it's on Facebook".
Post a Comment