Reflections in the Facebook mirror

Reflections in the Facebook mirror

June 20, 2010

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How you describe yourself on Facebook may reveal more than you intend

Aimee Lee Ball

How many times in life must we engage in self-description? Let us count the ways: There's the anxiety of college applications. The ignominy of Match.com dating. The embroidery of a CV sent to prospective employers. And, of course, there is Facebook.

The profile page of every Facebook acolyte has an enticing little Info tab, presenting the opportunity to demonstrate wit or wisdom, bravado or timidity, personal agenda or professional bona fides. A few categories are suggested by default - Likes and Dislikes, Favorite Quotations - but there's a big yawning hole in the section labelled Bio. There's no pull-down menu: The format is fill in the blank, every man for himself.

"It's unnerving to sum yourself up and convey your personality," said Gretchen Rubin, a former lawyer in New York and author of "The Happiness Project," who opted for tongue-incheek: Red-haired, left-handed, legally blind, massive consumer of Diet Coke.

"I decided that if you don't go deep, you might as well go very surface," she said. "I wrote what I thought stuck out about me, although it doesn't say that I'm a constant hair-twister."

The Facebook bio is part explanation, part self-exploration for Adam Rifkin, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

"A lot of people who do my kind of work are quite cynical, and I wanted to get across that I am open and sincere," he said. "But if you don't overthink it, you can have fun."

So his earnest observations include this: I do not play dirty when engaged in competition. But he chose as a photo caption: Any resemblance to a panda is purely coincidental.

Arguably the most tantalising bits of self-description are the spaces provided for political and religious views. Plain vanilla Democrats and Republicans defer to the irreverent (pinko liberal commie bastard) or proselytising (environmental jingoist) of in-your-face (left of you).

Religion is widely interpreted as a blank canvas of self-expression: Some are poetic (yoga, oceans, cathedrals), some cryptic (overhead, wide), some creative (Nikki;s yoga class is a religious experience), some guilty (have turned into a C & E Catholic: shame on me), some prosaic (private), some sweet (atheist except for kittens), some trying hard to delineate or differentiate themselves (atheist but OK with religious holidays)

Self-definition can cross easily into self-satisfaction, heading right toward self-adulation, and what is revealed unwittingly may be truest. On one end of the spectrum are the people who can't get over that they went to Harvard: their profiles stop just short of saying "we happy few."

On the other end is the charming self-deprecation of Jim Donovan, a financial advisor and president of the New Jersey Junior Lacrosse League who channels Mel Brooks: I am the white socks in the tuxedo store. "I guess that's just a father admitting: I know nothing," he said.

Defining yourself is often about aspiration, observed Mitchell Davis, vice president of the James Beard Foundation in New York.

"I spend a lot of time in Italy, where presentation of la bella figure is so important in the culture," he said. "But there's what you think you are and what other people think. Somewhere in the middle is who you are." He chose a succinct I eat well but too much as his bio.

"I'm of the generation where there was still a distinction between public and private information," Davis said. "But I am proof that you can eat plenty of farm-raised vegetables and whole grains and still be overweight."

Ultimately, Facebook self-Portraiture can tack frivolous, profound, introspective, even nostalgic. You can take Brian out of New York... identifies Brian Zisk, a consultant for music and technology projects who was unexpectedly transplanted to San Francisco. "I carry a lot of New York with me, and that's a way to express the core of who I am," he said. "Online there's a whole different set of clues for evaluating people you come across. if you meet someone in person, you can see if he's a slob or if he woke up this morning and spent seven hours on himself. But people online are remarkably similar to what they are in real life. If you're a jerk online, you're probably a jerk in real life, too."