"
. With Time to weed out your unattractive Facebook “friends”
Amusing, and interesting, piece in the Times Styles section today, by Stephanie Rosenbloom, about how people “manage” their online identities includes this:
[T]he attractiveness of the friends on your Facebook profile affects the way people perceive you. [A study] found that Facebook users who had public postings on their wall (an online bulletin board) from attractive friends were considered to be significantly better looking than people who had postings from unattractive friends.
I use an icon as my Facebook profile picture, so I’m not sure where that leaves me in terms of my impact on the perceived attractiveness of my “friends.” But I’m guessing that if I used a real photo, all the Times readers in my contacts would be un-friending me right now.
Anyway, the article, which is worth a read, also deals with the less-than-truths of “online presentation strategies” — a topic I address in a forthcoming Fast Company column, actually.
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
The Times (or maybe it’s the social scientists) is using the word “people” kind of loosely here, don’t you think? Which people care about how attractive one’s “friends” are? The same people in fraternities and sororities or other cliques?
David, This would of course be something non-conscious — like many forms of bias, positive or negative. I’m sure nobody actively “cares” whether people in ads are attractive, and yet they always are, for the same reason, as you know.