Talk:Dan Forstot

Comment 1:

Dan—

Overall, I think you did a good job assessing your identity on Facebook and how it compares to your real-life identity. I really enjoyed the creative aspect of your autobiography, as it was much different from other posts that I have seen in the class forum. For example, your last line of the introduction paragraph was a great segway into your piece: “In the introduction to timeline page, the first line reads, ‘Tell your story with a new kind of profile.' That about says it all.” It was straight to the point and had a sarcastic and slightly ominous tone that I thought was a perfect transition into the “birth” of Dan the Facebook Avatar. I had not thought of writing my post from the perspective of my Facebook profile, and it was great to see in action.

I think you did a great job incorporating relevant Facebook pictures into your post to describe your specific uses of Facebook. It was also interesting to learn about how your Facebook page both fits and does not fit you real-world personality. For example, Facebook allows you to show others your “Likes” and places that you visited around the country, but yet you are still judicious with your Facebook pictures, and do not necessarily depict your full personality because the context and meaning of certain pictures can be lost in translation in an online environment. It seemed like you gave a genuine, accurate description of both your Facebook views and personal Facebook use. Specifically, I thought the sections about your Facebook “Incongruence,” such as “Status Updates” and “Friends,” allowed your personality and beliefs to come through in a way that did not seem forced. It seems that you try to exert a certain control over your Facebook page while also retaining parts of your real-world personality. I got the sense that you were slightly struggling to create a general representation of your real-world interests on Facebook without creating an identity that it not you, all the while trying to make certain information inaccessible online so as not to affect future employment. These genuine concerns were heightened by your descriptions of how you deal with these dilemmas.

However, I still have a few suggestions for the final draft. First, it seemed as if you avatar-like tone was not used after the “About Me” section, and you reverted back to your natural voice. There is not necessarily anything wrong with that, but I think that your avatar voice was a genius idea, and it would be cool to see an entire autobiography written from that perspective. I mentioned above that I enjoyed how you incorporated certain pictures into your autobiography, but the bottom half of your post is bare, save for the text. Other examples of Facebook screenshots or specific pictures would increase the understanding of your online identity. Also, your conclusion was a little sparse. It was a good start, but there might be ways that you can tie all of your points together in the last portion of the post.

Overall, this was a great start to your autobiography. The writing style was creative and easy to follow with few grammatical errors that I could spot. I hope these suggestions help as you continue to make improvements for the final draft.

-Pierre Gerondeau

Comment 2:

Hi Dan!

I really enjoyed reading your piece and I found that I have a very similar view of the role of Facebook as you do – especially as it comes to the context of your profile and who it is viewing it at any time. The reference to Facebook as a combination of a resume and scrapbook was a very interesting point, and it connected well into your use of Facebook as an accurate and honest representation of yourself. I can tell that you put a lot of thought into your analysis of what your Facebook means to you. One place that I would suggest improvement is where you began talking about your status updates under “Incongruence.” It seemed to me after reading the description that your updates fit well with your true personality. It would help if you would more clearly define the incongruency here, and in the other paragraphs in this section, as I felt I was attempting to search for the incongruency in each as I read it. I also liked that you addressed many portions of your profile, but I would have liked to hear more about the ‘secondary elements’ of your profile and how they shape your avatar. Finally, I would have liked to see more pictures included. You seemed very proud of your ‘likes’ and ‘maps’ sections and it would have been great to see images of these included!

The tone in your About Me section (and continuing into the first line of the Overview section) was very unique and initially got me hooked on reading your autobiography; however, I would have liked to see this perspective continued throughout the rest of the piece! The subtle humor you used did keep your piece entertaining to read as well. One organizational concern I saw was that you put in your About Me section a comment about your Facebook not being entirely true, but then in the next section you claimed that your Facebook was as honest as possible. I see that these do not directly conflict (because one is a flaw in Facebook) but the location of these two so close to each other made the issue stand out to me at first as a conflict in your writing.

Great job overall!

~Allison Paciorka