Reading between the lines on a social network..

Just like learning about a person more than he/she wants to reveal by studying their body language, one can gain a better insight into the life of a person by taking a glance at his/her Facebook Wall. For instance, usually a change in display picture means that there has been a recent change in their "real" life and perhaps you can take a good guess as to what it is by looking at their recent activity. You don't have to be a hacker to gain that information. Just being his/her friend.



Before I get in too deep about this, I'd like to point out that I'm not formally educated in the field of psychology and I might be wrong. These are only my general observations and as with anything general, there are bound to be exceptions.



The first and most important aspect of the facebook profile is the 'Password'. Psyche profiling can start at such a basic part. We can know how sensitive a person is by their password. Usually many people, in the intent of keeping it easily memorable, use the name of their spouse, a pet, the day of their marriage etc., such as something that has meaning to them in their actual life. Such people tend to be empathic to their peers and value relationships in life. A kind of romantic and have an optimistic view of everything.



Then come people who try to keep their password secure by using obscure characters and words. It's obvious- They want to keep their secrets to themselves. They are somewhat introverts. They take a logical approach to life. Because they remember such tough passwords, I can take a blind shot and say they have good memory power too. But the passwords are private and are not meant to share. So let's not dwell on this and go to what is publicly shown.

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Then comes the profile. For sake of this, let's say he/she is your friend and you can see their wall. Then you exactly know what he/she likes and dislikes, what intrigues them, what irks them, what drives them etc. That's enough information to have a psyche profile on them.



You know what movies and books they like, what their hobbies are and where they work and what level in the administrative hierarchy they are. Based on their updates(assuming they do that regularly) you can understand and predict their reactions and manipulate them accordingly, if you please.



As an example, you might have come across someone sharing a 'cute puppy' or 'little kitten' via a video or a photo, not just once, but a lot of times. He/she is probably very sensitive at heart and you might want to think twice before you say anything or you might hurt them unknowingly.



If a person puts up a profile picture that's not his/her own and it's a picture of a celebrity, that would mean he's overcompensating for his/her lack of something in him/herself. Sometimes people tend to put up some of their valuable moments caught on camera(graduation, award winning, any achievement, wedding etc.). I don't need to spill that out for you. There's another category who put up a baby(not their son/daughter nor their childhood pics) or a lovely flower or a kitten or a pup (or anything cute and 'borrowed' from the interwebs). I don't wanna talk about them coz they're too sensitive to handle an opinion even if its validity is questionable.



People who put up pictures of themselves - They are most comfortable and confident at the place, position and time at which the picture was taken. They tend to look back at the same picture even after years, to remind themselves of that incident/location.

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Status updates are too complicated to generalise but they do have contextual implications. Reading the update in context to the previous items shared can reveal a lot more, but it is subjective.

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Photos shared could be the most valuable sources of information of all. You can know not only about the person in question, but also about his relationships with other people in the picture. If the most of the pictures are of him/herself alone - then he/she leans towards narcissism. If there are more people in the picture, you can judge them by their body language. You get to know who's important to him/her and how much, on a comparative scale.



Also, I've known personally some people who do things and visit places for the sake of sharing pictures on facebook rather than enjoying the actual activity. What seems trivial to most others, turns out to be very serious to such people. They're posers. They have a hidden side of them that's not as pleasant as they appear to be.

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I almost forgot about the applications. Some applications that are titled "how are you feeling today" or "how much he/she loves you" or something that it tends to reveal that possibly can't be, only show how much insecure the person is regarding that. Let's say you've seen an update from a friend about the app "how much he/she loves you?" - Independent of the result he/she has a crush on someone in their friend list and they comfort themselves in thinking that the computer knows more about their relationship than a real person(!!).



Most other apps are games and it's a no-brainer why people do that.

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One also might try to falsify their facebook profile and seem to be a person he/she's actually not. It's like trying to do an impression of others (in the actual world, not the online reality) and with an observant eye, it can be found.

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This is what usually runs through my mind when I share something on facebook. I do think through as to how it reflects on my personality and what others might discern about me when they read/see it. I also check my profile periodically so that it only portrays me as I want to be seen and no information is shared in excess to what I want to share.



I do tend to take a similar approach in my actual life too. I maintain a journal and retrospect on the events that occurred to me and how I could have handled them better, if possible. It also helps me know how much I have changed. But that's a post for another time.



So, to summarise be careful with what you share, coz I might use it against you if I can. Not just me, but it could be anybody.

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To you-know-who: On the surface this might seem to have been written with an altruistic intent but look closer and you'll find the narcissistic agenda.

To all: This was first posted as a note on facebook and the article was written with that on mind. However, the same rules apply in any other social network.