Outcome

Below is my current profile picture on Twitter. It's nearly three years old. I intend to update it to something more indicative of where I am in my life. At this time, I was wearing a "Carnegie Mellon" shirt because I had applied ED and didn't yet know that I'd be accepted. As a sophomore now, I can provide a more accurate representation of myself. Better yet, I can use my profile picture to show people something that I feel strongly about.

Process

I'm from Idaho -- the second-most conservative state in the nation. Donald Trump is currently winning in the Republican polls and one of the largest KKK communities still in existence today is up in the northern bit of our state. So I thought that it'd be the perfect opportunity to change my picture to something a bit controversial for most of my followers (~93% of which are from Idaho). At the time before updating my profile picture, I have 126 followers on Twitter. September 18th at 6:15pm, I changed my profile picture to this:

Intention

My intent wasn't to offend my followers -- if that had been the case, I would have used the cover picture for this project as my profile photo. Instead, I just wanted to measure their reactions with a potentially slightly uncomfortable idea. I didn't expect anyone to say anything about it; I don't think too many people would outwardly cry that black lives don't matter. I hoped that a conversation would arise from it -- that someone would reach out and either confirm my possibly unpopular opinion (in the given context) or refute it.

Product

It's not an image of myself with friends, my college, or even a cartoonish representation of myself. This is from the back wall of PNC Park, where these posters had been spread over many sections of the wall and, judging by their current state, had been cleaned up to some extent. I was biking by when I spotted these and actually stopped just to take a picture of them. Something about the way they had been ripped and removed stuck with me.

Effect

I'm not incredibly active on Twitter, and I'm by no means popular -- I've had around 125 followers for nearly a year. In the course of five days, however, I now lost 7% of my followers by simply changing my profile picture. Using the Unfollower app, I noted that 100% of them were Idahoan (without naming names). I'm not going to say that they all unfollowed me because they disagreed with the idea behind #BlackLivesMatter, but it certainly seemed to be the only variable that changed. I'd hoped to talk with one of them, but not a single one said anything publicly. Weird.

Reflection

I chose Twitter because I have a very homogenous and incredibly narrow-minded follower base (to put it bluntly). With Facebook, I've connected with many people of fascinatingly different backgrounds and beliefs whom I've met since coming to Pittsburgh, and I don't think I would have gotten quite the same impact. I've since changed my profile picture back to what it was originally to see if I get any response again. It certainly was a larger response than I could have hoped for, yet it was predictably silent (as are, too often, those unaffected by issues like this).