Thứ Năm, 17 tháng 11, 2011

Is Social Networking Distorting Our Perceptions Of Self Significance?

By James Mc Fadden


Do you notice how social media powerhouses like Facebook use a means of making each of us feel more important than we are? Sure, Lady Gaga's 45 million "friends" on Facebook are reliable, but for every Gaga on the planet there are lots of thousands and thousands of regular Joes just like you and me and our 63 Facebook "friends" and Twitter "followers".

If you're like most, then you have sent a friend request for a favorite movie star, or artist, or creator, or any other notabilite person from a Facebook account. I would be lying if I said I had not. For most of us, we understand it's pretty much a worthless exercise, understanding that it's only to some degree cool to indicate to others how Diablo Cody recognized our friend request. Vanity has its own place to be sure, but could it be becoming deceptive.

In order to get a real feel for this, I created a 100 % bogus FB account that has a great "name" that wouldn't possibly be a person's real name. I added several great photographs of next to nothing in particular, constructed some outrageous aspects of my new personality, and leaped straight into the deep end with both feet.

My initial purpose ended up being obtainas friends as possible from the smallest amount of time. I spent time and effort on Facebook inside initial few weeks of creating my new character, and it's a good thing I got endless internet access using my FiOS Internet, or else I don't think my little test would have worked.

The earliest 1,000 friends I acquired was the real tedious part, due to the fact I'd to perform all of the initiating on my end. You will need several effort to send out 1,000 friend request. After a while, however, I began to get a large amount of friend requests and the ball was rolling. Earning 5,000 Facebook "friends" was actually a little easier than I thought. I consider this a red flag when assessing my self-importance.

Here is the part that is not so funny, and a little sobering. As much people as I have following this one profile, it's all for naught. I've attempted to get my entire directory friends included in a variety of good causes, charity events, as well as other wholesome missions of goodwill. So far, I have been able to raise a stunning $8 dollars in real money for the worthwhile charity! 8 bucks! I've got more than that hiding within my couch and clothes washer.

Raising only $8 from 5,000 strangers who claim to be my friends really put things into perspective to me. In real life many people only know just a few dozen people, but within a joint like Fb you can get caught up with these types of misperceptions.

I came across what I currently knew: We're important to our true relatives and buddies, and for the vast majority of us that may only be just a few dozen people. All the rock bands, and pop stars, and actors, and national new anchors that we "friend" on Facebook have no idea of us, they never care about us in almost any meaningful way.

Eventually we're no more important on the day we "friended" Brad Pitt than we had been yesterday. He's most likely not gonna turn up at your graduation even though you included him within your "event", along with your endless stream of "LOLcats" has already caused him to block you. I apologize for being the one to break this for you.




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