Dear Mendelson and Papacharissi,
Your examination of sharing photos on Facebook was eerily accurate. The traits that you described were a description of my own habits and how I use the social networking site. The funny thing is that I never thought to put into words what I was doing but when I read your study it made total sense. Everyone on Facebook or anyone who posts pictures or even content on line performs a certain way. There’s a certain type of person they want to be, like you said, and they try to form that image through what they share.
Pictures are the best example for this performing because it’s the most intimate look into a friend or family member’s life. We can better determine who this person really is and what they are capable of. I think that it was prudent to approach it from the perspective of pictures and not just any and all content. Writing can be very expressive but most people on Facebook or SNS’s writes more than 20 words in any given post. My friends and family, however, always post multiple pictures of anything and everything.
I do not agree, though, with the thought that people are presenting themselves in a highly selective way. I think that responsible people do watch what they post but most people on Facebook and Twitter post inappropriate content such as pictures that their mother’s wouldn’t be proud of.
Overall, I felt that your piece was very enlightening to as how SNS’s have contributed and proliferated the performing that we have been doing in photographs for ages. Social networking has enabled us to share with a greater ease so that has become the number one reason to pose or act a certain way in a picture.
Thank you for putting my online habits into words.
Sincerely,
Andrew Kerth
No comments:
Post a Comment