Profile Swap

Intention:

Profile pictures are generally understood to be an image representing the user. From our analysis it seems that everyone chooses either (1) a real/artistic representation of themselves, (2) a group photo they are in, or (3) a symbol that represents them. It seems to be an online convention that your profile picture represents your identity.

I intend to break this convention by choosing an image of someone else as my profile picture for a day. Specifically, Ricardo Tucker (another student in the course) and I will be switching Facebook profile pictures.

The goal of this project is to see how breaking the most fundamental profile picture convention is received. How will people respond to a profile picture of someone they recognize but is not me? Will my friends still “like” the picture because it is something I posted and the “like” is a form of support? Will my friends’ confusion over my breaking of convention lead to them not “liking” it? Will people who don’t know who the picture is of “like” it? Will my friends react at all to my strange online behavior? Will they ignore it? Will my friends comment on or ask me about the image?

Process:

I did not need to create any new media for this experiment, as Ricardo and I simply switched profile pictures. We chose to use our current pictures instead of different pictures of each other.

Product:

Again, nothing new was created. Here is the original picture of myself:

And here is the picture of Ricardo that I used for a day:

Effect:

Surprisingly, there was very little response to my change in profile picture. No one questioned the fact that my picture did not represent me. The only comment I received was from my brother, saying, “Well, Everi... you've changed a lot,” and yet he still didn’t ask why I had made this change.

In addition, no one got Ricardo and I confused despite the profile picture swap.

Interestingly, a few people still “liked” the photo. The picture got 15 likes over the 24-hour period, and 3 of those “likes” were from people who knew what was going on. That means 12 people stopped to like my profile picture but yet didn’t care that I was breaking an online convention. It seems that some people will “like” something on Facebook without really considering what it is.

Reflection:

From this I learned that breaking one of the most fundamental online conventions has very few consequences. Most of my Facebook friends didn’t react to the image at all- either they didn’t see it or they chose to ignore it. A limited number of people will “like” a convention-breaking image, but those who do do so without questioning the image. It seems that for some Facebook users, a “like” is more of a form of support for the person who posted rather than a symbol of appreciation for a post. For the majority of Facebook users however, a profile picture that breaks a convention is simply ignored.