A Mirror On Your Desktop- Facebook And Exhibitionism

The recent statistics from Facebook says that it has 1 billion monthly active users. Facebook users find it quite user friendly when compared with other social networking sites. It is very hard to find a college student who doesn’t have a Facebook or a Twitter account. They keep in touch with their friends, express or share what they have in mind through these social networking sites. Photographs and text updates are the major components of Facebook updated by most of the users. This study focuses on how the frequent usage of Facebook induces the users to follow the so called “virtual pop culture ” i.e. mobility and exhibitionism. At present the popular culture among Facebook users is to get more likes and comments, the excessive number of likes brings them an opportunity to feel as one of the popular personality. Using in-depth interviews method the data were collected from college students in Tirunelveli who change their profile picture often of Facebook (N=20). The reasons for frequent change of profile pictures and updating personal pictures in public space were discussed in this paper