In my personal life I have an array of personas; each tailored to the group I am with or the event I am at. The online world is a different story though, my singular Facebook persona must be appropriate for my different groups of friends, as well as co-workers, teachers, and family members. In order to fit this wide arrange of subcultures my Facebook persona seems to me an idealized version of my life. The majority of my statuses are ending with smileys and my pictures are limited to ones of me with friends having a good time. At the same time, you can find out a lot about me from my profile: my networks, my friends, relationship statuses, events, pictures, posts, links, and all else that Facebook offers is available for all my 'friends' to see. But, once again, it only offers a glimpse into my life- I rarely will post a status about the mood I'm in or my personal problems. Overall though, my Facebook persona is an appropriate, idealized, and optimistic version of the 'real me.'
The idealized version of myself is evident just from looking at this screenshot of my wall. For instance, my current status reads: "trying to get all my work done so I can fully enjoy my weekend with the twinsey Lisandra Chacon. Mall, gator game, and downtown... going to be an awesome weekend :)" This does honestly depicts my weekend, but yet I purposely leave out how stressed I am over all my assignments and my mini freak attack about my two exams next week. This is due to the peer pressure of seeing all your other friends happy-go-lucky lives, which I feel I must also portray. Not, that this is bad either- just because you can share all the details of your intimate life does not mean you should. Another idealized part of this screen shot is my profile picture. This photograph is obviously posed, and the motive behind it is the attempt to portray that I am happy and that I am in a loving relationship. Luckily, this is not idealized, but it is still posed picture.
Another idealized part of my page is all of the tagged pictures of myself. A majority of my pictures show me with friends either smiling or being goofy. This is a false ideology, because I am not always surrounded by friends, and even if I am, it does not inherently mean I'm having a wonderful time. This social and happy persona is part of my personality and lifestyle, but it also leaves out day to day activities or pictures of me by myself. I choose to display this persona, because honestly, who wants to look at boring pictures of me by myself in my dorm. So instead I display the idealized happy side of my personality. This is why if you browse through all the photos you are likely to see me out with my friends or more recently partaking in school spirited event like Gator football games. However, what the pictures do display is appropriate, because I realize that a large variety of people are able to view them and judge freely. I do not think people need to take pictures of themselves doing illegal or inappropriate activities because even though it may be perceived by one subculture one way, it can be misinterpreted by a more conservative group, therefore I do not take inappropriate pictures in order to avoid this awkward situation.
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