Sunday, October 5, 2008
New FB Identity
So I asked you on Monday to create a fake persona and mess around on Facebook with him/her/it. How did that go? Who did you create and why? How was/is that person different than you? What did you do with this new persona? Did you get anyone to friend you? Answer these questions and detail any other funny/interesting/scary stories about your new persona.
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I created my new FB identity right after class last week because I knew it was going to be really interesting. I used a completely fake name and some girl's picture from MySpace. For the most part I left the profile pretty blank except for the music section. I listed her as liking the same music as I do. I used quite a few photos from this girl's MySpace profile for my fake Facebook profile. I intentionally used all of her "party pictures" to see what kind of reaction I got out of people. Her about me on Facebook simply says "I'm Viktoria. I'm 19. I like to have a good time." I did this to imply she is a complete party girl. I began adding people by finding groups based around a certain music scene. Once I added about 25 people I was the one getting friend requests by other people of these types of groups. At about 40-50 friends I stopped friend requesting people and now I have ninety-four "friends." Even though I knew none of these people they kept adding me, but rarely would someone actually write on my wall after friend requesting me. The only wall posts I got were from females saying "I" was gorgeous or cute. This Facebook experiment made Facebook feel more like MySpace in the sense that people aren't really there to get to know you.
I created my new identity shortly after class and have been working a little here and there. I decided to make a girl to see if my friends would add an attractive girl that they did not know.
The process of making up so much of the information was a bit time consuming but I managed to add a lot of info to make the profile more believe able. I even added a couple applications so that it would not look so plain and added a made up character from a classmate as a friend.
I decided not to add my classmates as friends yet because the profile of “Lizzie Guerrero” did not seem complete. But after a few more adjustments I will give it a shot. I certainly noticed the advertisements for the girl I created dealt a lot with dieting and looking good. Its very interesting because I never received any of those with my actual account. Just goes to show how they target people and not only that, they also influence people into believing that certain things are more important than they actually are. After looking at all these advertisements, many girls think that dieting is the right things to do when they are probably not really fat to begin with. Now after some more improvements I will see which of my friends are willing to add a complete stranger.
So I created my fake persona, but I feel really weird about it. I feel like a creeper...and the whole notion of facebook as a safe entity is gone. The ease with which I created this account (and our group account) makes me realize how unprotected the internet realm really is. Unlike the physical realm, where the way something seems it probably is, the internet realm is completely ambiguous and undefined. I always rationalized...who would bother going through all the trouble to falsify an identity? Well truth be told, it isn't such a hard task. I still have a hard time putting various descriptors on my page. I'm also partially interested to see how much people screen their friend requests...I think people will accept my friendship request without all the extra info (that shows that I put work into my profile). Then again, I'm also too creeped out to write much in there.
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