As vain creatures by nature, most of us have created Facebook accounts – our very own little online shrines dedicated to whom else, but ourselves. Within these cyber walls, we have established our own domains illustrating all sorts of colorful aspects of our lives such as what networks we belong to, which “friends” we associate ourselves with, photos, interests, hobbies, music tastes… Theoretically, Facebook sounds like the perfect place to invent an ideal identity for ourselves, where we can alter reality to conform to what we think our “online friends” would want to hear about and see. We can post our most visually appealing pictures of ourselves with carefully selected poses, candid moments out with friends, or adorable pictures with our boyfriend/girlfriend that let the world know that we’re “young and in love”. With all these applications, it really does seem that we can create these ideal identities within our Facebook accounts. However for some, there is only so much you can bend reality. There are a limited amount of “cool” photos of you and your friends having a good time if you rarely go out with friends, and there are a limited amount of people you can add before you run out of social connections (an no it’s not cool to add all of your friend’s friends just because you want more “internet friends”). There is this one girl who added me on Facebook, and she is my prime example of a person who tried too hard to make the “perfect” Facebook page for everyone to view. She is a nice girl as far as I can tell but she constantly posts pictures of herself, BY herself. In her haste to let everyone know that she has a life and gets out a lot, I don’t think she realized that in order to make herself seem popular, she needs friends in the pictures with her, as opposed to the “camera held at arms-length” making kissy faces photos that became the trend in all of her albums. She also seems to own what seems to be every application known to Facebooker-kind in an attempt to connect to people. Unfortunately for the girl, people took advantage of her profile and used it as a place to mock her instead of admiring her faux perfect life. I suppose even with the limitless opportunities presented by the internet and social software, there is still the proverbial wall to be hit when creating your perfect identity.
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