Outcome

Intention：

Me being on Wechat is very positive. My avatar is my smiling face and I tend to hide negative emotions when posting. So I want to see WHAT IF I suddenly change my profile to be a mournful person. I plan to change my avatar to all-black and pretend that I just went through a terrible break-up. Since on Wechat, your previous posts will become part of your profile, I’m going to set all my posts to private so that other may think that I’ve deleted all. I want to see how people react to(or will they notice) my sudden change in mood.

Process:

The goal is to see how people think and react when my profile suddenly changes. So I decided to change it as greatly as I can. I know after I change it, people will starts to reply and ask questions. In order to gain more information, I decided not to reply them at all. The biggest challenge is when I encounter my Wechat friends in real life. When asked in a face-to-face conversation, I cannot choose to not reply so I have to find a way to fool them.

Product:

On Saturday morning morning I started this project. I first set all my previous posts to private(which is a tiring work) and changed my profile photo to all-black. Then I felt it’s not enough so I post another post saying “I’ve had enough.” which is very ambiguous. After doing these thing, I waited.  

Effect:

How my friends reacted is just as I expected. Many replied under my post asking what’s going on, some asked in private. All of them expressed their concerns about me. Some of them even went to ask my boyfriend about what’s going on. Most of the people who asked are my friends in university, I’m surprised by the fact that some of my best friends didn’t ask. Maybe they just noticed my changes. 

Reflection:

The fact that many people asked me through private messages shows that profile photos do matter, although it seems people don’t care about it anymore after adding friends. What is interesting is that although I didn’t say explicitly that I broke up with my boyfriend, all of my friends thought so. What’s more, some old friends of mine reach out to me. I haven’t talk to them for a long time and it’s nice to have a reason to get in touch with them one more time.