Before I even finished reading one entry of her blog I started to fill in my own ideas about Petra, over-attributing by projecting myself on her. Considering her injury seemed important enough to her to include in the header of her blog, I thought that like me she was forced to temporarily stop training. I just let myself assume that she was in her twenties, unmarried and in the US. One thing that made me think US was that she was tracking her training progress in miles instead of kilometers. After reading a little further I found that she was ten years older than me, had kids and was in Britain (originally from Holland).
One thing that I found particularly interesting was how Petra perceived herself versus what I noticed from her pictures. In her first post on her blog, she described herself as the “fat slow one.” Once I saw a picture of her, “fat” would have been the last word I would have used to describe her, as she’s very thin and fit. Judging from her training times, she’s not “slow” either. In general, I find that selective self-presentation on the Internet is immodest or at least positive; I did not expect that she would be self-deprecating. After reading further on Petra’s blog, I noticed some other incidences where she is trying very hard to be positive about herself and her activity, but she also seems disappointed in her progress or ability compared to others. I’m left with the question; does she do this to seek confirmation from her friends that she is really not fat, slow, etcetera?
Possibly I could have misinterpreted Petra’s insecurities. In which case the social presence theory would hold true as I would have a misrepresented image of her. The lack of face to face and genuine contact with this person could have completely lead me astray as to what she’s really like. I’ll never know for real because I’ll never meet Petra. All I have to go in is her blog, and what she’s presented to the world. The outlet of a blog allows for so many social cues to be quickly made public, especially with a detailed profile. In about twenty five minutes of getting to know Petra I feel pretty confident that I have a good idea about what her life is like right now.
2 comments:
I like that you picked someone with similar interests. That way you can identify with the person your reading about that much more because you do have this in common. You can sympathize with her injuries and relish in her accomplishments, knowing how difficult it is first hand.
My impression of her referring to herself as fat or slow may be a low self esteem and she is looking for positive reinforcement from people that read her blog to help her feel better about herself.
When you pick someone with similar interests, it is easy to attribute their characteristics to your own so you have a sense of bonding even without knowing the person. It is exciting to know that there is someone that could be far away (Chicago is a fair distance from Ithaca) share the same interests. From your personal experiences and the cues that she presented, it definitely seemed likely that you would perceive many things in your life that would be similar to hers. It definitely must've been a shock when she turned out to be quite different!
While she did refer herself as being fat or slow, it may not necessarily be low self-esteem or even looking for someone to pay her a compliment to tell her otherwise; she may be comparing herself to others that are genuinely much better/thinner/faster than she is. Perhaps at one point she thought about being a professional runner? I didn't read her blog but I think that would be interesting if we had a synchronized method of contacting her that would let us know perhaps reasonings for her assessing herself in such a manner.
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