Selective self-presentation refers to the idea that social network users tend to “selectively” portray only their merits online while avoiding showing the negative aspects of selves. For example, people who are physically attractive are prone to present more selfies and people who attend ivy league colleges are more likely to emphasize their education backgrounds in their profiles. Selective self-presentation allows users to cultivate healthy relationships online with good first impressions, yet it also leads to ample problems in the long run. Simply put, selective self-presentation does not necessarily help to maintain a good relationship if too much deceptions are involved. Acknowledging the fact that no one is perfect, familiarizing and socializing with new friends always requires efforts to learn and accept not only their advantages but also their demerits. Ironically, perfect first impression can often result in sense of mistrust when the “dark side” of a new acquaintance eventually reveals. If a girl excessively embellished her selfies online with photoshop or other photo editing softwares, chances are the men who are attracted by her unrealistic “beauty” would ended up abandoning her once their start to develop their relationship offline because they find out that she does not look like her beautiful portraits. Similarly, if a man of low income bragged about his ivy league degree online to attract more opposite sex without mentioning his poor salesman job, women who held high expectation about his career might be very disappointed once they find out the fact that his salary can’t even afford a common rental department in urban area.
Adshade (2012) took an even more radical approach to investigate the negative effects of selective self-presentation on dating websites in her article "Big Fat Liars: Less Attractive People Have More Deceptive Online Dating Profiles”. She started her arguments with a hooker about a man she dated online who claimed to have a graduate degree but was actually someone who dropped out from community college. She then indicated that people not only lie about their education backgrounds, but also about their physical appearances. Adshade directly accused less attractive people as “more deceptive” online. Because these people are less attractive and thus are less likely to find a partner, they have to constantly revise their profiles to make them look better in a competitive market. I have never engaged in any kinds of online dating, but I did made lots of good friends online across different sites ever since I started to use the Internet. The anonymity nature of Internet allows us to be more open-minded and made us willing to disclose our secrets that remained untold in reality. When I make friends online, the only thing I care about is that whether we share anything in common. I do not care about their social status, their income, their physical appearances, etc., because those “realistic” merits are not what I am looking for with my friends. Facing someone like me, selective self-presentations (deliberately portraying oneself in favorable ways) would be simply vain and meaningless. I understand that not everyone feels the same way, but in my opinions, I agreed with Adshade’s claim that some of the selective self-presentation is purely deception rather than necessary appeals. People should always make efforts to attract others with their inner beauty, not with fake, perfect profiles.
Given the information above, we can see that appropriate embellishment of our online personal profiles is like decorating our resume, it appeals to more people, allows them to become interested in us and eventually get to know us. However, deception would be a totally different scenario. Telling fake stories and hiding significant negative aspects of ourselves could lead to unwanted consequences that departs from the original good will (seeking affections). In a nutshell, I believe selective self-presentation can either improve or undermine online relationships, depending on the ways we used it.
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