Often we wonder how others see us. We question whether people like us or enjoy our company. Do they find us attractive, amusing, intelligent or ugly, ridiculous and stupid? Most of the time we never know the truth, and perhaps we are better off not knowing.
However, it seems that social media is opening up Pandora's box and giving us a small insight into how others might really view ourselves. On Facebook there are dozens of 'applications' (I know because I've blocked them all) that will seek the truth from your 'friends', compare their perceptions, ask them to reveal their opinions as well as judge you on a range of issues and personality traits. Who needs a therapist any more?
And if that wasn't enough, now you can even be stereotyped, pigeon-holed and categorised by complete strangers. Break out the champagne!
Thanks to Twitter's introduction of 'lists' you can now gain an insight into how your followers see you via your profile and tweeting history. Let me explain by analysing the lists that I've found myself thrust into.
Firstly, geographic locations account for the vast majority of Twitter lists, so it is natural that I find myself grouped in with fellow sandgropers (Western Australians) on no less than 18 lists with names like perthians, perthites, perth-peeps, perth-people, perthmafia, perth-twitterati, the-perth-files, perthizzles, perthies or simply "perth". In addition I'm included on 3 generic "Aussie" lists and a "outside-usa-overflow-box".
That means that more than half of the 38 lists that herald my twitterings are geocentric. No surprises there, in fact it's pretty boring unless there is more to the 'mafia' than simple metaphor.
The next most popular type of category seems to depend on whether you can be confirmed as a real person with "people-not-spammers", "rl-peeps" (presumably rl='real life'), "knowirl" (know in real life), "yet-to-meet-irl" and "twitter-contacts".
What really sparked my interest (and the reason for this prattle) was the group of lists that categorised my activity. Apparently I make the grade for "Social media" by two followers, despite being nothing more than a mere user. Other tweeps have fashioned my twitter existence with descriptions like "rationalists", "politics", and most surprisingly "journalists".
Meanwhile there were compliments like "awesomepeople" and "they-make-me-smile". Both of which compensated for being on the "other and "random" lists.
I'm just not sure what to make of being on the list titled "naughty-max" :-p
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