After nine hours, the photo had generated over 200 likes, which was completely unexpected. I had initially thought that the photo would make people confused and possibly uncomfortable and only get a handful of likes, but the picture was immensely popular. My family members and people from my hometown as well as my sorority sisters and college acquaintances liked the photo while the comments were limited to people I knew from college (with the exception of Kiersten, a family friend). This all went to make it my most liked profile photo EVER. Let that sink in a little. EVER. 

What surprised me about the response (apart from how crazy popular the photo was) was that the effects of the photo seemed to be limited to Facebook, and that the reaction was visible only on the picture itself since no one sent me a Facebook message about it like in other people's projects. Despite having an overwhelming number of likes, only one person brought it up in conversation in person. I've seen this kind of thing a lot, however. It seems to me that people tend to only respond to social media with social media, and that the boundaries of social media and the real world are sometimes hard to transcend.

REFLECTION

In my last project, I compiled a collection of Facebook profile pictures and attempted to find relationships between the amount of likes on it, and the content and style of the photo. This was a lofty goal, however, and I feel that I was unsuccessful in finding a relationship between the two. 

Here again, I was baffled by the results of this experiment and struggled to make a conclusion about why specific content gets likes on Facebook. While I can't make conclusions about other profile photos, my Facebook community respond positively to the stark contrast I sought to create, rather than being put-off by it. They appreciated the caricatured "realness" of the situation it depicted and bought in to the idea that sorority women don't always wear big hairdos and expensive Lily Pulitzer handbags. I also think the content of the photo itself resonated with the audience. I mean, who doesn't like to get cozy in a blanket and eat pizza?

All in all, what I learned from this was that people on social media respond to humor and realness in a photo as positively as they respond to staged, intentionally aesthetic photos. However, if I would repeat this project again, I would be curious to see how my Facebook audience would respond to a photo that did not depict me at all in it, since this is something I have never done before. 

It's still my current profile photo and will most likely remain on my profile for some time.