Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Profile 17

Using a combination of both photo evidence of his own theatrical and musical endeavors as well as those in popular musical theatre, he establishes his identity as more than someone who is solely interested in theatre, but as an outgoing and enthusiastic theatre person. One of his cover photos is of a popular movie, whereas another is of his own a cappella group at Stanford, showing that he not only knows about theatre, music and film, but he actively participates in it himself. He also has included a nickname (D-Lo) in parentheses next to his full, formal Facebook, invoking in his profile viewers a sense of familiarity and approachableness. Although in his information section he lists that he is a secretary in the Department of Philosophy, which appears official and prestigious, he subtly counteracts this title with the nickname so as to appear slightly less formal. Yet even so, he leaves parts of his identity mysterious up for interpretation with some of his less obvious choices for a cover photo. One of them is a picture of a deformed tomato on a countertop, which could be interpreted a myriad ways. With no caption or context, he forces his profile viewers to question his purpose in posting this picture, even if the image itself is meaningless. People subconsciously want to learn more about him through this image, because they not only want to know what the picture signifies, but what his intentions were in posting it. Does he think it is funny? Does is have a deeper significance? Does he collect strange vegetables and fruit? Was he hacked? 

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