The fine line between public and private

There were 5 people out of the 53 people I chose (approximately 10%) who did not use profile pictures of themselves.

1) Marriage equality

2) A drawing of the person

3) An emoticon

4) A graphics promoting themselves 

5) A pug

1) can be considered something that is important to the person. 2) can also be, depending on the context of how the picture was drawn. 4) is a public version of what my friend wants other people to see -- her "logo" because she is a musician, so having a simple image is important for other people to easily remember her. 

As for 3) and 5), there are a few possibilities: the pug and emoticon mean something on a deeper level to the people or they just chose to be more private than others. 

McLuhan did bring up a good point about privacy. With the ability for media to spread so rapidly, privacy is becoming something that people have to proactively check on to actually partake in. Therefore, having profile images not of themselves could be an act of defiance towards this shift towards being more public. However, what I see of the trend over the years is that more and more people are okay with using profile pictures, mostly because friends are using it. However, I only have a tiny sliver of a much larger picture.