4: Facebook Frenzy

I chose to write about option 2 this week since Facebook is the most popular social networking site for college students. Off the top of my head I can only think of one friend at Cornell who doesn’t have Facebook. (I know. How does she live?) Anyways, because so many people have Facebook I knew that I was bound to find someone that would be willing to rate their own profile.
I had my friend rate each of her elements one through five. I then also ranked them, based on what I know about her from our friendship thus far. According to her, she was very honest. She ranked her basic info, contact info, activities, interests, and TV shows as fives, and her music and movies as fours. The things that she felt she had manipulated were conventional signals. This is not uncommon as people are selectively self-presenting everytime they edit their Facebook profile. (And we all know when you’re editing your profile because Newsfeed so graciously tells us).
For the most part I agreed with the numbers my friend ranked. The main discrepancy I saw was that in her activities she has five things listed, three of which she did in high school and does not participate in at Cornell.
There were two other things I noticed about her profile, that I didn’t address when I orginially asked her to rate her profile. The first is the number of friends she has. As I write this she has 438 friends at Cornell. Now, she is a very social girl but I highly doubt that she is actually friends with half of them. Part of Facebook though is the number of friends you have- so skillfully displayed on the left side of the screen for all to see when they visit your page. The other part I noticed was her relationship status. She has been dating her boyfriend for a long period of time, but right now she has no relationship status. The funny thing about the relationship status, though, is that it gets changed on a regular basis. They seem to be “in a relationship” when they’re in a good mood/on good terms, but often have nothing at all if they’re fighting. This is a whole other issue of self-presentation.
Overall my friend’s profile is accurate; it is just the small things that may not be exactly true. It is hard to lie about assessment signals on Facebook, though, because there are plenty of pictures, and most people actually know you.