Myspace to FB: my transition and what that even means...

Sorry this blog is late!

When I was in high school ('01-'05), Myspace was just making its place in the world. I had thus far resisted creating a profile, because, and I vividly remember this, of my fear of new technologies...

Fortunately, that fear has removed itself to another area of my life! Oh, wait, that's bad.

Anyways, the point is, I still didn't create my first social network profile myself. Two of my pushier friends decided it would be beneficial for me to have one. In hindsight, it was probably just so that they had an easier time getting in touch with me. As boyd explains "some teens went so far as to create accounts for resistant friends in order to move the process along" (19). I went along with it, because as teens tend to follow trends once they're sucked in, I was one of the masses. However, in order to make sure my friends didn't add any of the more embarassing aspects of my identity to my profile, I immediately logged on to edit/delete and was hooked.

Then came college. September of '05 was when Facebook was still at one of its college students only elitist points. I was eager to switch. Everyone at WSU was all "did you see what he put on his status?" and obsessed with SuperPoke (what was that by the way?). Plus, my little sister couldn't have one yet. Ah, the undergrad years...
However, my FB profile still exists, and has a much wider audience. After years of edits, transitions, omissions and additions, my FB profile looks a little different from when I created it.

However, as previously mentioned, technology and I don't always "get along," and I can't figure out how to put in a fancy screen shot a la @Jill Bohle. I am jealous. You all can see my profile at www.facebook.com/maggie.hillmann if you're seriously interested.

So, on Facebook, and let me see if I can list all the hats I put on whenever I log in...I am : a sister, a daughter, a friend, a colleague, a teacher to former students, a grad student, a cousin, a neice, a stranger, an employee...etc...I'm sure. A wide range of audiences as you see. I have conciously avoided putting up certain statuses because I know who I'm writing for/to...

But however, my profile does tend to mimic how I exist in real life, and my socio-economic status, race and gender match exactly what boyd suggests the world of a typical FB user look like. I'm an economically comfortable, upper middle class white girl and I have since abandoned and deleted my MySpace profile. I had to ask myself if I was part of the white flight.

I look at my friends list and while I know almost everybody (yes, I'm "friends" with people I've never met), they mimic the lines I draw between the different groups I consider myself a part of. The people I work with have never met my family, and the my family have never met those kids who didn't like me in high school but apparently like me on FB. My friends on FB are predominately white, but as I am friends with people of other backgrounds in real life, those friendships remain consistent online. In this way, my profile is an example of boyd's statement in which she states from a previous article she wrote:

"Online, status markers take on a new form but ways that are reminiscent of offline practices. For example, the public articulation of connections on social network sites is a way of visibly marking oneself in relation to others and their status" (qtd in boyd 22).