Facebook Selves

On one hand, there are many ways in which Facebook itself limits the ways in which community can represent itself and, on the other hand, people do temper themselves in many actions when creating Facebook–selves. Firstly, some users do not represent solely their real–selves. Many users shape their online profiles based on their false– and ideal–selves for various reasons, such as: exploration and deception, self–promotion, social pressures, shame of the real–self, gaining popularity (Gil–Or et al., 2015, p.2; Michikyan et al., 2015, p. 57,60; Van Dijck, 2013, p.203). In this case it is hard to determine whether those users try to stand out and be unique or whether they try to hide their otherness and remain unitary with the whole community. Van Dijck (2013, p.203) suggests that Facebook users try to act as celebrities and, therefore, shape their Facebook–selves to gain popularity and recognition, thus it can be assumed that Facebook community members try to highlight their advantages and bury weaknesses, to some extent, in order to present themselves as fashionable, intelligent or “cool”. To some degree it may be called a homogeneity, considering that Facebook profiles are shaped to present the best side of a certain …show more content…
Although, false–self is not an invention from the social networking age, Facebook is a vehicle for a development of this phenomenon (Gil–Or et al., 2015, p.1–2). Gil–Or et al. (2015, p.2) claims that users rarely