For this assignment I chose the second option, and had my friend rate her Facebook profile, and found that it was pretty accurate (according to her at least). There were three parts she rated as one, and they were all things she put down as jokes. For example, her hometown is “I’m a creep. And so is Laura, MA” and she took a quiz that showed what her DNA looked like, and surprisingly, that is not true. The only other parts that she did not rate as one were her interests and music because she said her tastes have changed and she didn’t update her profile. Her picture, contact, education, work, and personal information were all correct.
I would consider everything that is displayed on Facebook a conventional signal. All the information, including the display picture, is very easy to change. According to our class discussion on Thursday, people will lie frequently to appear attractive, and lie subtly to appear honest. My friend’s Facebook profile completely went against this, because she only lied three times in her profile, and all three of those times it is blatantly obvious it is not true. I think there was not a lot of lying in my friend’s profile because none of the information provided is very personal. Her height, weight, and body type are not listed, which were some of the most lied about things in dating profiles. Also, if she lied about those things, they could probably be proven to be lies by looking at all 331 pictures of her. For these reasons, I think that most peoples’ Facebooks are probably more accurate than we think.
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Hi Anne. Reading your blog was very interesting. I chose the same option as you for this week’s assignment and found very similar results. My friend’s facebook went against much of what we discussed in class last week as well. Do you think the reason that people do not lie on facebook, even though theories would predict that people would lie on facebook, is because everyone has hundreds of pictures of him or her posted? I think that is one possible reason. There were a few other possible reasons I came up with as to why people lie infrequently on facebook. One of my better explanations was that since most of your facebook friends go to your school there is a high possibility of actually seeing them and interacting with them.
Anne, its really interesting how you found that your friend's profile was pretty much 100% honest. I don't even consider her jokes as lies, because they lack the intent to deceive that is required of all falsehoods. Maybe you just surround yourself with honest people, or maybe your friend just doesn't have much to lie about. I actually agree with you that facebook is a more accurate CMC medium that we give it credit for, but I would venture that there is a lot of self monitoring and impression management that goes on in facebook profiles. These are not necessarily lies (a good picture of you is still a picture of you) but can be more accurately characterized as taking every liberty to present yourself in the best light possible and project your ideal self out to others.
Hey Anne, I kind of touched upon this when I did my post. The actual profile I looked at was pretty accurate, but when I was looking through the profiles I noticed that a lot of people were blatantly lying. Whether it was to be funny or what, very few people actually lied to make themselves look better. I can’t figure if people’s jokes count as lies, but Jason makes a good point that maybe people do it to project their ideal selves out to others through their sense of humor. It’s very hard to lie on facebook I think because since it originally started as a college network type thing, you’d be intereacting with the people you were friends with, so they could almost call you out on these lies. Whereas with an online dating service, these people have never met you before, so you can present yourself however you want and then mold yourself to that ideal self you present.
Hi Anne. When I did my assignment this week I had the same result. My friend's facebook turned out to be 100% accurate. Very surprising! I think a major reason why we found facebook profiles to be so honest can be explained by the Features Based Approach. Specifically, since facebook is asynchronous and also highly recordable, it makes sense that people would be less likely to lie about personal facts.
Since facebook is constantly being changed and updated, with new features being added almost everyday, I wonder if our friends honest profiles will become less honest in the future. I guess we will have to wait and see! Good post, it is great to see someone else with an honest friend!
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