First Impressions

I’m pretty sure everyone who has a Facebook has stalked someone else on Facebook at some point.  Even if you’re not intentionally “stalking” by dictionary standards, you are still looking through someone’s life online. 

There was a brief spiel at registration that went something along the lines of this:  “Alright guys. When you first find out who your roommate is, please don’t look them up on Facebook first.  Try calling them or actually getting in touch before you judge them and get a first impression on the Internet.”

That seemed like a great idea to me.  I could see where he was coming from and what he was trying to get at.

Did I go about it how he recommended?

No.

When I found out who my roommate was, I immediately got on Facebook and found her.  I wanted to at least see her profile picture so I would know what she looked like.  And then my intent was to call her and talk to her before she accepted my friend request.

That didn’t exactly happen. 

Her profile picture was of three girls.  I assumed that she was the one in the center.  She wasn’t, which left me extremely confused when I saw the rest of her pictures 10 minutes later.  I ended up talking to her on the phone a week later and I was still trying to get myself to see her as the girl on the left.

Thanks a lot technology.

I didn’t tell her this until a few weeks ago when some of my closest friends and I went out to dinner.  We all started talking about first impressions and it turns out I wasn’t the only one extremely confused by her profile picture.  One of the other girls jumped into the conversation and voiced how she also thought that my roommate was the one in the center. 

As we continued to talk more of us started to add other interesting things to the conversation.  A lot of us purposely put up a senior picture that was pretty.  We wanted the first image people saw to be a good one—we wanted to make a good “first impression”. 

The weird thing is, none of these first impressions were actually in person.  Yet we somehow still managed to jump to conclusions. 

All of us took turns telling each other what we first thought of each other after we saw pictures on Facebook, and some of the impressions were accurate, while others were way off.

I remember going through my now best friend’s photos on Facebook before I even truly knew her.  I had no idea that we would instantly click as well as we did. 

I had no idea about anyone.

I’m so happy that I now know everyone in three dimensions, not just two.