Well, This is Embarrassing

For some reason, I found posting a picture of my Facebook profile to my blog to be really unpleasant. This isn't how my profile usually plays with people - and I certainly don't spend this much time talking about it to anyone.

At any rate, I've never viewed Facebook (or MySpace) as a venue for meeting new people. The idea of making a friend only online has always been creepy to me. Instead, Facebook is just a different way for me to interact and (re)make connections with people I already know. If someone goes through the work of finding me on Facebook, assuming I know who they are (and they're not sociopathic), I'll probably accept their friend request. Now that I've moved away from the Midwest, where all my friends and family still are, Facebook helps fill the communication gaps. No, I haven't had time to call my aunt in a week or so, but by glancing at my wall, she can tell what I've been up to and how I'm doing.

Especially in comparison to some of the other profiles I've seen from class, my Facebook profile is robust, brimming with information - and all of it is true. I see my profile as something for all my Facebook friends. Newer people I've met and people I've fallen out of touch with can see what I'm doing, what I'm interested in, etc. And older friends can see a couple inside jokes and laugh at my multitude of quotes.



I personally like Vie's suggestion of social networking sites being possibly subversive to traditional labels, "social networking sites are challenging because of their ability to be both threatening tot he established order of things and at the same time protective of traditional ways of understanding the world" (20). On Facebook, I am a lot of different people. I'm a former high school classmate, a best friend, a daughter, an older cousin and sister, the young friend, a graduate student, a former student. And my profile tries to balance all these things (and more) at once. I fail to be all things to all people, but I want to trust people - so I probably err on the side of too much info than too little. What's the point of having an ironic Facebook profile?



Honestly, and kind of embarrassingly, this is the stuff I like. I do like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Project Runway, Jesus Camp, and my friend's hysterical band Axis of Action. But I guess I'd rather be honestly subversive than guardedly so.