There were so many points that It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens by danah boyd made that really puts into words what we may all be thinking about our identity on the internet. When it comes to our presence online, profiles on any social media platform can give us the opportunity to paint ourselves to be the person we want to be. Like boyd mentioned, that particular identity can change from one platform to another. She gives the example of a girl who is an avid One Direction fan. She shares her love for the band on Twitter, but not necessarily when she’s with her friends. Social media has given us an easier way of expressing ourselves to the world, and it connects us to people we may not know in real life, but fan girl just the same as we do over our favorite bands.
One of the most important aspects of identity online, I believe, is our profile picture (or avatar). What is so important about these photos? Well, it is what instantly identifies us to other people on the internet. If you’re looking for someone on Facebook, they can identify you from all the other “John Doe” profiles based on your photo. It automatically helps someone identify you and say, “Oh yeah, that’s him!”
It isn’t very uncommon to hear nowadays the phrase, “Making it my profile pic!” Millennials, in particular, seem to put a great amount of time and thought into choosing their pictures. We would never make our worst pictures of us profile pictures because it makes us look bad or it gives us a negative online “identity”. I recently came across an article shared by The Washington Post that gave a brief overview of a study done on how people react to certain profile pictures. Turns out, if you’re wearing a hat or have short hair, people will more likely have a negative response to your photo. Isn’t that interesting that we can measure relatively you’ll get more likes on one photo than another? It makes sense as to why many of us (but definitely not all) take time and effort to choose the best photo we want to represent our best self. Because the opportunity to do so is there, I don’t see why we wouldn’t take that chance. I think everyone wants to present their best self because we live in a society where those that do so are rewarded. The reward? Likes and comments full of compliments, of course.
This is really funny because I think of my sister and her profile pictures. I think now a lot of people try to be quirky. My sister’s instagram profile picture is Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks and it just shows her personality and the things she likes. I see other people posting silly profile pictures like their dog or cat. I think everything online is an emphasized version of yourself. Or maybe a curated emphasized version of yourself?
I feel like identity changes so much through adolescence, especially when it comes to millennials. I know from personal experience, I go through and ‘cleanse’ my Facebook or Instagram every now and then because I come across some photo that my 15 year old self perceived to be a ‘cool profile picture’ at the time probably with a plant with a caption of an inside joke in-between my friend so something that has no relevance or pertinence today. The idea of a virtual world gives us the ability to show who we want to be instead of who we inherently are. I feel like the points you made are definitely spot on and definitely make me wonder if I accurately portray myself on social media.
The profile picture seems to be the users attempt at portraying their ideal self—one free from the mundane and maybe unflattering aspects of their character. What would be interesting to find out is whether or not profile pictures influence the expectations people have of what a person will be like in real life, and if these help to shape real world interactions as well.
Your post about profile pictures and identity really struck a chord with me because I definitely agree with the idea that a profile picture is the tool that most people use to showcase the best version of themselves online. My friends and I actually always talk about this. If we’re like looking up/lurking Facebook profiles of someone, my friend always suggests that we look at the different profile pictures they have chosen for some period of time. She says that those are the ones he/she personally believes that he/she looks good in, which leads to them being the best pictures to look at as a point of reference. Thus, it says something about that person’s own self-reflection on his/her identity.
Another point to bring up is the use of profile pictures as maybe other markers of identity, like what someone is involved in or what they like to do or places they’ve been, etc. I just recently thought of this because I recently changed my FB profile picture to a sort of flyer for my dance team, as we are holding Mid-Year auditions and looking for members to join our team. The rest of my team changed it to the same flyer picture and it becomes a sort of huge, spread out advertising across the part of FB that is affiliated with UCLA students. By doing so, we identified ourselves as dancers and part of this team. This kind of profile picture use is so common, especially for promoting college campus events, orgs, etc., which can be another marker of something pertaining to one’s identity and interests.
Image is everything when it comes to social media. The profile picture is the first thing people see when browsing through profiles, so I’m glad someone was able to find a connection to that. It’s interesting really, that people with hats or short hair are read more negatively than others. It actually reminds me of this article recently written by NY Times (http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/how-your-facebook-likes-could-cost-you-a-job/?_r=0) where they discuss that there are new methods popping up that actually can calculate your IRL personality from your Facebook account alone (likes, photos, posts)–and surprisingly, it was able to gauge one’s personality better than even their closest friends, in some cases.