If I present you with a blank sheet of paper, and said "Cyrus, I want you to fill these three sheets of paper with personal information that will be seen by friends, family and maybe even acquaintances and the public." What would you write ?

If you are an early-discloser, know or care nothing about online privacy, or find it easy to brag or give out personal details then I suspect production of this document would present no problems. The peer-pressure remains though, particularly amongst teenagers, to try and fill this document with things that make you look at least as interesting as Joe Bloggs that sits next to you at school....

You are assuming of course that the reader wants to know this trivia and inconsequential information ? I don't want to know about my neighbours new girlfriend, but that doesnt stop him boring me at length about her when we meet. Is that bad manners ? You decide.

It is the expectation that when I visit a page to find out if my mate is still in Zurich for Christmas, I am presented with a range of information concerning the new fashionable clothes he has bought, new car he drives or ostentacious things he has done. It strikes me as somewhat arrogant or precious that he thinks the world might be interested.

It is social custom, and is also cultural. Some people are more private and circumspect than others. The internet has removed many geographical barriers.

People that start threads generally want to discuss a subject or get some information (exceptions obviously). It becomes clear pretty quick if it is a simple boasting exercise ("tell me about your exotic holidays" refers.) or simple (Me! Me ! Entertain-me-and-my-rat !) attention-seeking posts. The important thing here is that they are subject to peer-scrutiny and response which is not controlled by the original poster and may not be possible on other sites that can cut you out of their clique at will.

You can join a forum and declare yourself the best salsa-dancer in Zürich, but don't be surprised if real salsa dancers knock you down to size with scathing accounts of your performance. That is slightly different from the image you present of your talents on a FB-style profile where the only comment you do not veto are those of sychophantic fluff.

BigD

__________________
You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

That's a rather insecure view though, this viewpoint of being judged..... and those who feel they need to create some sort of 'better' me will do so regardless, both on forums such as this as well as on Facebook.

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Bring on Summer!

I think BigD is saying FB is friend centric whereas a forum such as this is topic centric.

I can assume that most people on this forum will be interested in discussing topics about Switzerland whereas some of my friends on Facebook, who I have known for 20 years +, have no interest in discussing Switzerland. I know it's possible to setup chat groups or similar in Facebook but they have no personality or individuality, there is no community behind them, that's why I choose to spend time on cheesy sites such as this.

This viewpoint of being judged and being in competition with your peers pervades all aspects of society, as I am sure any Psychologist will tell you.

People can lurk on forums or post as little as with which they feel comfortable or have something to contribute on the topic in hand.

FB and other similar sites present you with an area to be filled with all exciting stuff about you.

The pressure is there to fill this space, because Suzie from Class 2 that I fancy has a page, and John fancies Suzie and he has a big page too, and it looks like I am not as interesting as he is, so I have to put some more stuff up there...and so it goes....

BigD

__________________
You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

This was my point about Peacock displaying.

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Hung like Einstein, clever as a horse...

Still don't get it, there's no obligation to fill out anything, but there are incentives to fill out you're actual interests rather than your made up ones.

For example, one thing that initially made me a little uncomfortable is say, the Music section of your profile. It's an easy attack on others, you can simply label their music tastes as "cool", and therefore superficial, but this works every which way you want, that label can be applied to anyones music tastes that are different to yours. If you look beyond that, it can actually be a tool to hook up with others who actually share your music tastes, or a portal to something you may never have heard before.

I think it's pointless to try to project an image that isn't you, as you'll only end up with a bunch of people you don't actually like, and this is true in real life too. You can say there's pressure to fill out your profile correctly, and in life there's pressure to wear the right clothes, and drive the right car, how you deal with that is up to you, but FB doesn't change that in any way.

As any psychologist will tell you, this is also strongly related to your locus of control and your level of self confidence.
The belief that you're an interesting, desirable person comes from within, and Facebook unfortunately does put pressure on those who believe that they are not..... and therefore need to create a more desirable, interesting, witty persona.

Facebook is customizable - it is not a must to upload photo's, there's no need to share a lot of personal information..... but people can choose to do so if they want. Whether they do it to share info and expereinces with friends / family, or whether they do it to appear more interesting is their own motivation....

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Bring on Summer!

hey Peachy, not sure what you mean by "young professional", but "Sam has been outed as a young professional on Shooting the cheese" made an interesting status update for my Facebook account this morning........

You have some valid points to make, FB is what YOU want it to be. Somewhere to showoff, somewhere to talk to old faces, somewhere to lurk, soemwhere to pick up girls (or boys) etc. I guess I do what I would call the News of the World test.....if I somehow I came into the eye of the quality newspapers in the UK would the stuff I post on FB, this site or any other forum come back and bite me in the ass......or would I ashamed of my mum seeing it!

But you're missing the point: its the pressure of the environment to upload this stuff and people's often mistaken belief that is is necessary for them to be validated by doing this.

A teenager in Class 2, will have his page up for less than 24 hours before someone asks him why he does have photos of him at school on there, or allow access to his gang of chums ? The pressure is there to provide content, and once it is provided is often denigrated.

Online bullying is a wellrecognised phenomena. Imagine putting up photos of your family and being told by a guy from another class that you look like a bunch of in-bred ******* ?

You could claim we can all exercise free-will in what we expose, but this is not done in a vacuum, and to assume that is the simple reason for much of the profiles is naive in the extreme.

BigD

__________________
You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.

All the single-mums I know stopped reading News Of The World because she saw all the fun I was having being published in there...

BigD

__________________
You make your own luck.

www.shootingthecheese.ch
The place for fun and chat in Switzerland.