Social media profiling

We all do it. Even if subconsciously. Likes, follows and comments can tell a lot about an individual. Even the absence of interaction says something about a person.

Surely you’ve thought about it before. It happens when we put our contacts circle into categories.

• “the Watchers”, they’re nosy, watch without engaging (you can also refer to them as “The Judgy”;
• “the Teasers”, they only react, don’t comment;
• “the Smarty Pants”, who like to put stir the pot, only comment once and then watch the argument escalate;
• “the Annoyers”, they love to argue until they’re blue in the face to get nowhere;
• “the Moaners”, they moan about everything, but don’t offer any constructive criticism;
• “the Solvers” (or “FTFs, First-Time-Fix, as we class the ideal Customer Support”), they have a solution for anything;
• “the Braggers”, who only share their big spendings, even if that only happens once a year;
• “the Oversharers”…

The list can vary and could be shorter or longer. Surely you have similar ones, in your mind, and you are classing them as you scroll over posts. And many of these will also, around about Christmas, follow under another four categories: “To keep”, “Unfollow imminent”, “Unfollow” and “Unfriend”. Every time I go over it I find myself thinking: “Why do I till have someone I worked with 15 years ago in my circle? We don’t even interact. For all I know, they could have passed…” I’ll leave soaking a link with someone that gives a post or a comment a “like” 78 weeks since it was posted, if being disconnected from social media it’s their character trait. I mean, I do that. I think that’s a Gen X trait, to just not care about what other people think.

As a result, my contacts list has become half its size in the last decade. To be honest, interacting with like-minded people can be fun, and you don’t really have to know them, but belonging to the same generation can be the most common denominator.