Outcome

Intent

For this project, I intend to replace my Facebook profile picture with a a picture of my face with my eyes and mouth censored out and possibly slightly distorted. I want to see what kind of reactions this gets (how uncomfortable or weirded out people are (since they can't see a picture of me), whether they think my profile picture is connected to my life and my profile picture becomes a reason for concern). I want to gauge what people think my profile picture means to me, especially because they won't be able to see if I'm smiling or showing any emotion.

Previous Profile Picture

New Profile Picture (Process & Product)  

Thought Process

I've never chosen a profile picture where the purpose of my profile picture isn't clear. You either see my face or know exactly what I want you to see (a cause or something I'm doing). After some time in high school, I liked to pick and choose my profile pictures to show something awesome that I'm doing or something/someone I care about. I do like to put my highlight up for a long time.

The typical trend of the types of profile pictures I have are: 1) an event or cause that I support, 2) me making a stupid face or doing something dumb, and 3) me with friends (usually two of us). I even had a picture drawn by me as one of my profile pictures, so I guess the most far-removed concept I could think of was to purposely obscure my face. 

Product

I had a picture of my face handy because I had to send one in for the class that I am currently TA-ing. I did a simple pixelate in Photoshop to skew the details of my face as much as possible. As you can see from my previous profile picture, I typically write a little blurb that goes along with what my profile picture is showing/what I want to convey. Here, I chose to make it as uncertain/obscure as possible and left everything in the air. Even as my friends started commenting, I chose not to like or interact with the comments.

Reactions/Effect

Comments

楊: 這是⋯⋯怎麼一回事？

[translated from traditional Chinese] Is there...something wrong?

Linh: Wow, you sure have changed a lot since I last saw you

Well, so, Linh is actually my roommate and she literally watched me upload my profile picture... (our desks are on the same side of the room)

Jiacheng: 这是……怎么一回事？

[translated from simplified Chinese] Is there...something wrong? 

Messages

A classic response from him. He isn't afraid to speak his mind. We've also gone through stressful situations and done a lot for each other, so we're close enough for him to say this and be funny.  

We've worked with each other for around 3~4 years now, I think, and we've definitely gotten close enough for this to be the first response when once of us does something strange. (This is Kate, who commented "Wat")

Maura and I do weekly Skype sessions. She remembered seeing my profile picture and mentioned her thought process (voice), which we wrote down. If we hadn't talked over Skype, she wouldn't have commented anything at all. She didn't think anything was wrong, but she didn't want to assume the wrong context and make an unfunny joke. But once I confirmed that there was no context, she wanted to make a funny comment. "I like your pale chin pixel"

As you can tell from his profile picture, he's a really private dude. He also told me:

Full adherence to the original privacy policies surrounding personal information may not survive transfers in ownership during the company's decline.

So, me being more private is a good thing to him.

[translated]

It's my homework

There's no problem
:D

This is my cousin (who commented in Chinese first). She was glad to know that I am okay.  

Jiacheng and I both speak Chinese and Japanese and want to study abroad in Japan, so we talk about languages a lot. I didn't find him copying my cousin's comment surprising at all.  He didn't express any concern at all and just assumed normal behavior as if we were talking.

My close friends commented on my new picture. Sometimes other people do (on other profile pictures) as well, but not this time because they didn't know the context.  

At around the 30th profile picture, I realized what kinds of things I wanted to upload. The first 30 were all pretty close to each other in time because I would upload whenever. The ones with a lot of likes were chosen very purposefully (with a minimum of 70-ish likes).

The picture I got this time had significantly less likes. It got 4o likes, and judging from chatting with my friends, I think most of them weren't too clear on what I was trying to convey and didn't want to like it without knowing whether it would offend me or not. 

Reflection

I underestimated how well my friends knew me. I hypothesized that there would be more people confused, and that people would be more confused. Instead, they mostly didn't even bother to ask if I was okay or anything. In fact, some people told me it was disgusting or scary. 1) Perhaps my choice of profile picture didn't actually deviate that much from my norm. When I looked back at old pictures, many were me being stupid, so they might have taken pixelation as another example. My profile picture still showed me, so if I were to do it again, I should probably choose something I hate or, a sad saying. 2) I probably shouldn't have let people post comments after finding out that it was a project. It's hard to know what exactly isn't a norm, as Goffman puts it, for yourself because people around you can notice the little nuances about you that you cannot. However, people I don't know that well definitely didn't like my picture as much, probably because they couldn't recognize me, or there wasn't enough of a spark. From this project, I believe my close friends think my profile pictures are for whatever, and people who don't know me well think my profile pictures are highlights of my life.