Proposal

Since the ‘creation’ of the mainstream internet in the 1990’s, virtually everything in the world has changed. One of those things is how people communicate with one another. What I plan on exploring is how people visually communicate themselves online and the reactions of others to these personas created. Many websites have contributed to this problem of…identification, but with the emergence of social networking sites such as Facebook, and dating websites such as PlentyofFish, society has become nosy and pre-judgmental. For example, let’s say you just met a girl you thought was cute in a class of yours. You know her name, and decide to add her as a friend on Facebook. You go home, login, find her, debate whether it is creepy to add her or not, then do it anyway. Once (or if) she accepts, the first thing you do is become nosy. You look at her pictures, wall, info, etc. It’s a natural human instinct to be curious, but the amount of information that can be obtained by the internet isn’t natural. There is a reason we have socially accepted rules of privacy: privacy is something that we all have and will choose to give out secrets to a person when we feel they can be trusted. This goes for women as well as men. Once you are done basically stalking the person, you immediately make judgments based on what you saw. It is almost an instinct; nobody can say they do not judge others. Based on the judgments made, you will decide how you will act when talking to this person face to face.

We already know that this tragedy does in fact happen. Anyone who has a Facebook, Match, PlentyofFish, Myspace, etc can all agree that they do indeed do these things. Any of them who say they do not are simply lying. As I have previously stated, it is human nature to be curious, and when all the cards are on the table, why not just take a peek? The first thing that someone does when searching for a date on Match.com for example is to look at the picture. That is the reason that the majority of the dating websites require you to sign up after you get your first few glimpses of matches. The company knows about this curiosity and utilizes it in order to get people to sign up and pay for the subscription. Besides this ‘tangible’ reason though, this is an interesting aspects of human behavior that everybody exhibits. This is a new trait that has come about within the past few years as websites and technology have advanced greatly. It is important to fully understand why people act this way, what this means in regards to interaction with not only someone we meet online, but for others in the future. This sense of ‘e-stalking’ is almost becoming instilled in our brains, and it needs to go away. Everyday I see more and more people on cell phones browsing Facebook. Just about everytime they are on a computer, they will visit Facebook. This is not a phase that is going to go away. Heck even the older generation is getting into this phase. Facebook started out as a college only thing, then they opened up to high schoolers, and then finally to anyone. There is also a Facebook like site for professionals called LinkedIn.
In order to solve this problem, the simplest thing to do is to avoid adding anybody as a ‘friend’ until you truly know the person. Most people meet someone, then go back home and find them and add them before they have spoken to them long enough to know their personality. One group that is practically prone to pre judging others is women. There have even been a few studies that show Facebook has caused ‘friendship’ addiction among women. Women are more vulnerable because they place more of their self-worth on their relationships rather than men. Another way to solve the problem is realize that IT IS OK to only have 100 friends. People like to show off to others, and never want people to think they have less friends than somebody else. The biggest means to solve the problem is to actually let the problem be heard. Self confidence is the number one reason this type of problem exists. While it is perfectly fine to be self conscious about oneself, most people take this to the extreme and obsess on what people will think of them, and thus usually are not totally truthful on profiles / information about themselves.; As Oscar Wilde puts it: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”