4:2nd Option Put Your Best Photo Forward

Since Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of Facebook, the world of social networking has escalated into a way of life for many American teenagers. The way we connect with others has been reduced to a mere message, wall post or even a poke (whatever that means). We no longer are inclined to mail a letter, make a phone call or even send an e-mail when we can simply connect through Facebook. On this Facebook profile, not only can we connect with others, but others can gain access to a great deal of information about us and what our lives are like. Upon first glance, the most apparent aspect on a profile is that of the incredibly important profile picture located in the upper left hand corner. Individuals are left to their own devices to put up a picture of their choosing as long as it’s not pornographic. This ability to choose any picture to provide a visual representation of ourselves, enables a person to select an image that depicts him/her exactly the way he/she wants to be portrayed to others. This picture is something that will form a person’s first impression of you, because just as in FtF interactions, we often make our first judgments about a person based on their level of attractiveness.

Directly below the photograph are a number of links including the ability to view to other pictures of the person and to send a message. A little bit further down the page, mutual friends are displayed and below that, friends from their particular school are displayed. On the left side, we are also granted to access to the person’s photo albums and groups they are a member of. To the right of the photograph, a person can selectively disclose personal information (assessment signals) including their full name, networks, sex, relationship status, birthday, phone number, home address, e-mail address, year of graduation. In addition, you get to learn a lot about their personal preferences which are much more easy to manipulate (conventional signals); their favorite movies, their favorite music, favorite quotes and so on. Finally, below all this information, is a person’s Facebook wall.

Without anyone knowing, a person can change, alter or modify any aspect of his/her profile they don’t like, they can de-tag photographs, delete wall posts, and remove/add information. With such an ability to present yourself they way you want to be perceived, I wanted to see just how much my best friend was willing to deceive. For this assignment, I decided to analyze the profile of one of my best friends that I’ve known since elementary school. I knew I would be able to detect the accuracy of her profile, and why she chose to include the things she did on her profile.

After administering Catalina’s method of rating my friend, I discovered that she believed that her entire profile was completely accurate and not at all deceiving giving 5’s to all aspects. Since there isn’t really a sense of anonymity on Facebook, we connect with our real-life friends that we interact with face-to-face; it doesn’t really make sense to convey false information. However, we all want to present ourselves in the most positive of light, and tend to exaggerate a few details here and there. On the whole, my friend was very accurate in the information she displayed. Yet, in her music section, tended to include quite a few bands that simply “sounded cool” but were not a true representation of her musical taste (i.e. Jimi Hendrix, the Doors & Led Zeppelin). Although she can appreciate them, being the musician that she is, she has only listened to them a few times. Her photographs served to be the most deceptive devices on her profile, indicating so many untrue qualities about her and did not display her day-to-day life.

While my friend may have not intentionally put anything in her profile to deceive others, she of course wanted to “appear attractive and appear honest”. According to Catalina’s study of online dating, she found that women are more likely than men to like about their weight to select a photo where they look incredibly attractive. She also found that men are more likely to lie about their height than their weight and women are more likely to lie about weight than height. Men want to portray themselves as taller than they really are and women want to portray themselves as thinner than they really are. Catalina’s findings were consistent with the assessment of my friend’s profile. Although my friend thought her profile picture was an accurate depiction of herself, I beg to differ. While the photo does indeed look like her, it is the picture on her album cover to her first CD. Obviously, she had her makeup professionally done, a stylist dress her, and the picture professionally taken. This was clearly a picture that can hardly be considered a “general” photograph.

By following Walther’s concept of selective-self presentation, my friend did not include any information about herself that would make her seem ignorant or unattractive. She was sure to de-tag any photos of herself that portrayed her in as physically unattractive. This follows with the expectancy discordance model that says that men are attracted to physical attractiveness and youthfulness when looking for a mate. My friend is actively seeking a boyfriend, its no wonder she wants to appear so attractive. According to Hancock’s feature-based model, I would not expect my friend to deceive over an asynchronous and recordable media such as Facebook. The communication that takes place on Facebook is asynchronous by that a person has time to shape and alter their profile to send a particular message. In addition everything is recordable in that all your actions are shown and documented. Despite this, there is still an opportunity for my friend to deceive and selectively self- present, since most of the people she communicates with are distributed all over the country.