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2 years ago
Picture …Perfect?
Two days ago a friend of mine posted a photo of another friend of mine on facebook. A third friend (yes, its confusing, bear with me) decided to make that photo (which was, actually, quite embarrassing) their profile picture, thus making life a little bit more confusing, yet a little bit more entertaining.
The question I have is, what does choosing a photo that is not you as your profile picture say about you. And even further, what does choosing a picture of another friend as your profile picture say about you? What even IS a profile picture and why does it matter?
I made a conscious choice when joining this site to not put a photo of myself up. This is primarily because I don’t want to show my identity, but also because I felt it didn’t suit the theme of my blog. In looking at a profile picture it seems these are the two primary points: identity and theme.
In looking at identity, it makes sense in a blog or other social entity where you reach out to the unknown that your profile picture would not be an image of yourself. Privacy and anonymity is, in fact, often the POINT of these entities. We join them to leave our real life, to search for a new home outside of our (possibly) dreary physical resting place. By revealing our true identity we serve only to connect our real and our imaginary homes, shattering both.
Similarly, in such entities a picture that is not of yourself often fits the mood or theme much better. On the forum afterthepostrock.com, which I frequent often due to my musical tastes (and honestly, people tastes), art, funny images or album covers are used more often than photos. Not only do they express the personality of the poster better than a photo ever could, they also better fit the mood, tone, and theme of the board as a whole. In a way, these anonymous images tell you more about the poster than any portrait ever could.
In looking at these two factors, we begin to see reasoning behind a choice of image for a profile pic or thumbnail. In returning to the friend posing as a friend on facebook conundrum, however, our current definitions serve only to better confuse us. Anonymity is not necessary because those who will see the photo will already know you; facebook is, in essence, an online connection between worlds. It is also not necessary to fit some theme or mood as facebook is merely a social networking site without a specific topic or mindset. By choosing a non-photo identity, the friend is in fact alienating himself from the rest of facebook, making it difficult to find him within the labyrinth and making his posts confusing for only a silver of hilarity.Why would he do this?
Here in lies the solution. This friend WANTS to be anonymous in a world where he cannot. He doesn’t want to be easily understood. he doesn’t want to be found by new people on the site. True, the choice brings laughs to those who understand the joke, but this is a small group of people. By choosing that photo, as a result, the friend is projecting a conscious message to all of his online counterparts: these are the people I don’t mind communicating with, the rest of you can go screw yourself.
I’m always interested in others’ abilities to hold this mindset, the “screw you” mindset. I was always under the impression that this created more difficulties than not. I, for instance, have always had trouble making friends, or at least keeping them. Yet there lay examples of people conciously pushing people away, conciously making themselves difficult to understand.
I suppose I can’t understand them. Its funny how such a simple choice - that of an image, can tell us so much not only about a personality and the choice of that personage, but also of ourselves and how the way we deal with situations compares to others.
-mother-
Simply call me mother. I'll teach you well.
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