Your Facebook Ratios And What They May Say About You
Would you like to have an inexact measure of your traits and patterns as a friend?
If someone could hand you a written print out, showing you how you tend to relate to others, would you want to read it?
If you’re a Facebook user, and particularly if you use it regularly, you can learn from how you present yourself on Facebook and how you respond to others.
Go to your “Wall,” look at your comments and the “Like” feedback you give to others. What does that written information say about you?
If people could only define you by how you present yourself in writing on Facebook, how might you be defined?
If you were to put your comments and status updates into categories, how frequently would they fit into these categories:
1) Talking about yourself or your family
2) Talking about others
3) Expressing a common frustration
4) Sharing a specific personal problem
5) Making a political or ethical statement
6) Trying to make friends laugh
7) Being grateful
8) Self-promotion
9) Promoting your business efforts
10) Giving positive feedback to others
At what ratios do you do any, or all, of the above? What categories would most or many of your communications fall into?
What kind of a friend are you on Facebook? How closely does that approximate what kind of friend you are in person, or in ”real life”?
Who we are on Facebook may often not be similar to who we are in real life. But you might be surprised at the similarities.
Facebook requires we take an additional affirmative and public step of putting our thoughts into writing – taking a public stance, making a statement. In some ways, it is like a large communal blog or chat room, where people present their personalities and priorities.
As in real life, we may perceive ourselves in one way and portray ourselves in another. What we think is often not as apparent as what we say and do. And in the land of Facebook, we’re not evaluated by what we’re thinking in our heads; rather, people only see what we actually write and do. So, if you’re regularly grateful in your mind, but you rarely express it verbally or in writing, people are more likely to perceive you as less grateful than you may perceive yourself.
I’m not advocating people should err on the side of being publicly disclosing on Facebook or any other public forums. Rather, I’m suggesting if you want to get a possibly more accurate measurement of what others actually see from you, then looking at your public, self-described, and self-edited presentations about yourself may be a place to gather some more objective data.
Sigmund Freud was not a fan of biographies or autobiographies. He wrote “What deprives all autobiographies of value is their tissue of lies.” And he wrote “Anyone who writes a biography is committed to lies, concealments, hypocrisy, flattering and even to hiding his own lack of understanding, for biographical truth does not exist.”
Even if Freud’s assertions are true (that all autobiographies are lies and carefully concealed, self-promoting presentations), I’m not sure I can agree with his further assertion that those attributes deprive autobiographies of all value. There is still much to be learned from the presentations, even if they include concealments and fictions. Beauty and pleasantry are not only found in raw honesty; sometimes, they are found in carefully edited presentations.
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interesting post.I liked the last thing you said.
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Mark: Thank you.