I am a professional facebook stalker. Everyone does it, I just happen to be great at it. Therefore, for this assignment, I decided that I would take advantage of my skills and take the opportunity to look at this girl on facebook who I don’t know so well but have heard a lot about. I thought it was be a great chance to see whether my opinions of her based on real face-to-face experiences would align with my perception of her personality based on her facebook profile. I decided to use Brunswikian Lens Model to see whether the cue validity about her personality and the cue utilization which are the cues we use to get to know people achieved an accurate functional achievement of my opinion of this girl.
First, I looked at the identity claims she made to see how she saw herself and what she wanted others to know about her. I didn’t notice any self-directed identity claims where she included some type of information or inside joke that was only intended for her. There were no acronyms representing her friends or any references to that time at the beach where some guy used a sleazy pick-up line. Therefore, I decided to look at the other directed identity claims where she included information that she wanted others to know and then think about her. I saw that she was married which is hard to believe and makes me wonder about why she wants other people to see that she is married. This could possibly overlap with her self-directed identity claims and it might be some inside joke since she does not have a person who she is married to so it might just be for herself. I also thought that it was interesting that she decided to leave out the year on her birthday, but did want people to know what day it was so they wouldn’t forget. The fact that she included her major, where she is from, her high school and some of her interests and favorite books didn’t say much but did help me get a better idea of who she was from my familiarity with those places and interests.
Then, I decided to look at her interior and exterior behavioral residue to see where she’s been and guess where she is going to get a better idea of who she is. For interior behavioral residue, which shows past and helps predict future behaviors in this environment, I hit an obstacle because she does not have a handy mini-feed telling me her newest friends, wall posts, or pictures. However, I was able to do some wall-to-wall stalking which allowed me to see what she was recently writing on other people’s walls which gave me an idea of who and how she interacts with other people. For her exterior behavioral residue, which shows her behavioral outside the facebook environment, I had no trouble looking at pictures tagged to her and pictures she had up. Let me tell you that these were very scandalous pictures telling me that she was quite a party kind of gal.
After meticulously stalking her, I then compared her to the Five Factor Model to see how I would ultimately rate her. I first rated her high on openness, extroverted and did not think she was conscientious because she is very revealing in her pictures and obviously has a lot of friends (who I too knew) who seem to like her. I also did not think she was neurotic because she did not really say anything specific in her interests or books and seemed pretty laid back making her a very agreeable person who gets a long with her friends. Unfortunately, actions speak louder than words and my great disliking for her based on our social interactions overcame any misguided liking I hypothetically concluded based on the information provided on her facebook.
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3 comments:
Hi, Jillian!
I liked your post, and especially appreciated how you noticed her passive/aggressive attention-seeking with her birthday and her “married” status. I also wrote about the unique other-directed characteristics of the birthday information in my own blog, and I feel that few people realize how passive and lazy the birthday reminder function has made us. I also liked how you improvised in the face of a lack of news feed to explore the wall-to-walls, which are almost just as effective at tracing behavior, events, etc. Here, you find information that might almost be more inclusive than that on the feed, as you’re witnessing actual conversations and not, “Person X has added ‘Weezer’ to her favorite Music!” Lastly, I really agree with your analysis of her personality with a comparison to real life. Facebook can present all the personality traces necessary for the Bruswikian Lens, but it still can present a person very different from the true character we know in real life.
Your post was very interesting, and I really enjoyed reading it. I think your examples of identity claims and behavioral residue on the girl’s Facebook profile accurately portray the Brunswikian lens model. You said that you did not really find any self-directed identity claims in the profile, but I think you definitely did with the marital status. You even mention this later on in that the girl’s “married” status might overlap with her self-directed identity claims. From my own experience with Facebook, I think this is probably the case because it is likely an inside joke. I also found it interesting that your personality assessment of the girl from Facebook completely differs from what you know about her in your face to face interactions. This relates back to information we learned earlier in the year about self-presentation goals. Because Facebook is editable, asynchronous, and has a reduced number of cues, the girl is bound to be able to self-present herself in the most favorable light. In doing so, she is hiding any of the aspects of her personality that some people, like you, can immediately pick up in face to face interactions.
New Note 6
I liked how thorough of a job that you did using the Brunswickian Lens Model to evaluate this person. I find it interesting that she takes so much care to hide things about herself through the mini-feed and not putting anything in her profile, and yet it's possible to tell so much about her through her pictures as you say, because they are so revealing. In my opinion, this definitely merits lower points in terms of conscientiousness. It's somewhat careless. Obviously she doesn't want people to know how old she is, she doesn't want people to track her through newsfeed, and she doesn't look like she's looking for a relationship (hence the "married" status). However, when you go through the photos, you see a lot of partying and other things which say just as much. This is quite revealing I think. This is a pretty interesting facebook profile.
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