As I said in class on Monday I want you to create a fake profile on Facebook. Go nuts, completely make someone up, add a fake photo(s), etc. Make sure your fakester is different than you in some way (e.g., gender, race, etc). Interact with people. Get people to friend you. Be as mysterious and wacky as you want to be...nothing illegal please (e.g., no threats to public safety).
When you are done with this please write the prompt about your experience.
Who did you decide to be? Why? What are they all about? What kind of feedback did you receive? Did you feel creepy doing this, why? Etc.
Please note that we will be using your fakester for next week as well, so keep him or her active.
MAKE SURE YOUR NEW FRIEND SENDS ME A FRIEND REQUEST! I need to see the finished product.
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Do I really have to reveal my identity? I don't want to... but I guess I have no choice.
For all intensive purposes I am Matt Cackley. SHOCK! Yeah, Matt Cackley I think the best thing about him is that his name doesn't sound made up, but it is. It is a short story that I don't think anyone would understand but, if you really want to know the origins of Matt Cackley you can ask me.
Matt was created a long time ago, but he was inactive for a while until we started this, so I had some catching up to do. He was originally created to be mean to people that were mean to my friends (another long story) but that never really went anywhere, he more or less just became a puppet for fun. There was even a Matt Cackley for Prom King group created. One thing is for sure though, he loves TACOS!!!!
The feedback I recieved was mixed, there were of course plenty of "who is this" responses but when I started really talking to people thats when the fun started, some people think that they remember him. One person asked if he was the kid who peed their pants in gym class freshman year, I couldn't resist and of course told them that it was true, that was Matt. Then there would be the times that I would send anonymous notes with not so nice sentiments to people that I didn't like, but it was okay because I didn't have to ask to be their friend, and I wasn't associated with Matt, so how would they know.
That being said, did I feel creepy, not at all, I think it is a great way to get agression out and just let your feelings out. People don't need to know who it really is, but if you can tell that you are freaking someone out it feels kind of wierd.
I'm just going to make some predictions now about who is who, chances are I will be wrong.
Sara Salmon = Caleb Brown
Emily Felker = Sara O'Donnell
actually that's all I got.
Good guess, my profile is indeed Sara O'Donnell! She is actually similar to me in terms of age, gender, and race, but the twist is that she represents the clichéd type of annoying girl that I can't stand. Like so many people on Facebook, she doesn't use capital letters. On her profile, she appears to be this bubbly sort of girl whose interests, groups, pages, applications, etc. are generic. I made Sara O'Donnell this way because I thought most everyone would know people just like her, so she would seem somewhat familiar and non-threatening. Anyone might vaguely feel like they know her, and she's just a freshman looking for new friends, so why not add her?
Many people did respond positively to Sara; I managed to accumulate 50 friends (including this class) in just a few days. Most of the people I invited were girls in the Six Pack with 600, 800, or 1000+ friends, and sure enough, they added Sara without question.
The main thing that made me feel creepy doing this was when people would send me messages asking if we knew each other, although this only happened 3 times, and it was with people who weren't actually at U of I (just friends with the Six Pack girls). One of the girls defriended me after I answered her, but the other two guys kept me as a friend. I guess it goes to show how casual people really are with their Facebook friends!
So I waited till the last minute to make my facebook friend. I did it both on purpose and accidentally. I was concerned about needing to make new email address or how I could use an old one but keep it private and so I kept putting it off all week because I really didn't want to make a new email address. Then I managed to sneakily ask (this process took a few days) my roommate about privacy settings, and so now I have a facebook friend. Her name is Sam Goodwin.
The most shocking thing of this entire experiment is the fact that people are actually friending me! Who friends someone they totally don't know?! Within five minutes of the birth of this new person, I had three friends. What the crap?!
I decided to be Sam Goodwin for a couple reasons. I loved the name Sam because it wasn't gender specific, even though you have to pick a gender. I really enjoyed the "My Name is Pat" aspect of it. Sam is pretty similar to myself in that she is the same age, and from a similar area, but I did this to be sure that I could maintain all aspects of her personal image. I didn't want to have her be from a town that I knew nothing about!
It was hilarious to have myself come up on my recommended friends box, but I don't want to friend myself yet, I want to try to get a large variety of friends before I can start friending people that are closer to me because I feel like that would be a dead give away. Even though I think the success of this comes from the fact that NO ONE EXPECTS IT! And that is the creepiest part in my opinion. I am completely taking advantage of the fact that people expect others to be honest.
Because I do not feel completely familiar with the likes of Allen Hall, I chose a much more challenging approach to my FB experiment. As some of you may remember me mentioning, I received my High School Diploma from a military academy, where everyone feels socially enclosed. The mentality of brotherhood there extends across the campus, including the assumption that everyone is your best friend and brother whom you can lean on in times of crises. The sole reason for this is the very small size of the school, maxing out on rare occasions at 300. Thus the idea of literally creating a person seems very much more challenging then would be at a public school of 4000. The students here don't just suffer here 7 hours a day through classes, we learned the hardships of becoming a cadet 24 hours a day, including weekends. The friends you would have their are literally you family-they're all you have. Thus the prospect of fabricating a fake "brother" seems even more impossible. To my surprise, I have confirmed every friend so far. "James Clayman", from a very higher culturally and classly neighborhood in Northern Chicago, is now the ex-cadet who attended SJNMA for a year.
My only problem is that I fear exposure greatly-the situation holds a much higher risk of being caught. I have chosen his friends carefully, those who where not in in grade level or in his Company, which he was "assigned" to. I feel not creepy, but rather stressed by this, for creating a fake life full is not too easy, given the choices of personal elements overlapping. I find his family status not matching with his political or religious beliefs; the majority of my school was overwhelmingly conservative. I can also not remember any "hipsters" at my military school, or even "scenesters. At least his social stimga is well fitting for his age and current school, for which of yet I have no plans to integrate himself into.
Actually Katie, I am Caleb Brown.
I decided to be Caleb Brown; he’s actually a fake person my friend from home (Lexi) and I had created together years ago. I had been talking to her on the phone about the project because I needed ideas about how to go about creating this person, and she suggested the name. Also I thought it would be more fun to be a guy. I only told two people about my fake person, because they are always in my room and they’d be suspicious if I was on Facebook a lot, one was my roommate. When creating Caleb she was joking that I was creating my “ideal guy”, which isn’t entirely false. All his interests I picked because they are similar enough to mine that I know them, but are not favorites. For example to get his taste in music I picked a band my younger sister really likes, Kings of Leon, then typed them into Liveplasma.com to see what bands are similar in style and picked some that were semi-familiar to me. Caleb plays guitar just because I think that’s a cool talent to have, he long boards because my sister does, and plays tennis because my roommate does. Also his birthday is the date of my high school friends made up holiday (every year we celebrate the 25th of April with a party or going out to dinner). The only feedback I have received is 9 messages in my inbox of people asking how they know me, some I tried to trick the rest I just left. I wished a kid “happy birthday” on his birthday (I don’t even know him in real life!), and he replied “thanks”. I also convinced some random kid that I am in his chemistry class and I’m not even taking chemistry! I felt kind of creepy, but all I really did was ask everyone I could find who is listed as Uillinois ’13 to be my friend, people were even sending me friend requests! At the end of just under a week Caleb ended up with 231 friends! Only 46 are ones that I am friends with, most of Caleb’s friends I’ve never even heard of. I was surprised to see how willing people are to accept random friend requests.
I didn't really get a lot out of this experience. It was fun to go online as someone else and pretend to have an interest in my friends, which was my ploy, but it got old really quickly to me. I liked the fact that, when I hung out with the friends I had my persona add, they were all talking about this " Eric" and why he was adding them and what they all talked about with him. I felt like a jerk when they were just sitting there perplexed and angry because he was trying to be a FB PIMP lol. I don't think I would do it again because for one it was harder having to create someone all over again and having him to befriend all these random people. And secondly I didn't really get joy out of doing it.
To answer Kristin's questions, I decided to be this guy named, "Eric Be-My Friend." I decide to be him because he represented everything I am not and am possibly afraid to be socially. Eric is all about playing the field and talking to anybody and everybody he can both male and female, he's a school oriented person, and takes crap from no one. When I did pretend to be Eric it was funny because I would make comments on people pictures like, " looking hella sexy" or, " u and I belong together." From these comments I recieved comments and messages that showed interest and messages of confusin..." WHO ARE YOU?" I felt really creppy doing this. I felt like a stalker preying on the unknown. I felt this way because I put myself in my friends and random individuals shoes. I thought to my self and came to the realization that I wouldn't want anybody doing this to me. THIS WAS A VERY FUN AND INTRIGUING PROJECT BUT PLEASE COUNT ME OUT NEXT TIME. It was harder doing this than it was to maintain my own FB.
Muy alternate personality is Guy Shoulders. Guy was born in '87, and loves the 1990s. He's a buddhist green party skater who loves passive resistance and all forms of coffee- basically a hipster to the core. Did I mention he's an anthropology major?
I still have to make him more social, but eventually he'll get by.
I enjoyed friending myself, and friending the alternate ego of my friend who isn't even in this class.
In all honesty, this feels very wierd and took me a lot of effort to do. I feel very strange making a fake person, almost like what I am doing is not only deceitful but wrong.
I'm not on facebook enough to nab droves of friends yet, so Guy's behavior almost mirrors mine in a way.
That's almost as scary to me as making Guy- somehow being related to his completely different personality.
I think I will add credibility to Guy by loading his profile with crappy quizzes and 90's fanclubs.
Skip-it!
Rocko's Modern Life!
Animaniacs!
This might be the outlet I share with Guy...
the post under "emre" is mine....
I used another email account to cover my not-so-stealthy tracks.
18 friends! That's how many I got in just a few hours of making my Facebook account, (all of them requested by me, of course). To be honest, I was surprised and it was a little ridiculous -- I didn't get one question or wall post or anything asking who I was, even though I know for a fact (obviously) nobody knows me. Even closer friends of mine, who I assumed would be more discerning about their fb friends (I guess because I am?) just willy-nilly accepted friend requests.
I'm excited to see what happens when I actually interact with people!
I decided to be a typical teenage boy named Jason Sherman. I chose him because I figured it would be easier for me to be a boy. If I chose to be a girl, she would end up being a lot like me, and we can't have that. I also chose a guy that is like a skateboarder because I find those kind of guys interesting. My guy likes to be active and listen to emo/hardcore music. He is a typical boy that is kind of against girly things. I haven't received much feedback yet because I was very late in creating him. But I will update about some of the feedback. Lately, he isn't making friends that quickly. I can't remember exactly how many friends that I have requested, but they are not coming that quickly. Regardless, it is interesting how some people will easily befriend people that they don't know. Personally, I don't do that because I hate having pointless friends. I do kind of feel creepy doing this, but it's ok because I have been friending people I don't know and people I could care less about. It would seem more difficult to befriend people that I am closer with. I am also not harming them or taking advantage strange people's information either.
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