Project 2 - The Fakebook
As a member of both Facebook and MySpace social networking sites, I have seen them flourish to addictions in many people. While these sites do allow people to keep in touch with various people around the world, I found that it was very impersonal and somewhat of an invasion of privacy (ironically because I controlled what information was published). My breaking point, though, was when a friend accidentally changed his relationship status to single and also changed that he was interested in males and no longer was interested in women. Gossip flourished and many assumed that this friend had come out of the closet and broke up with his girlfriend of two years. This inspired me to exploit these naive folks and do a project. I too changed my profile. My relationship status was updated to say that I was engaged to Pam and I was tagged in the photo of her hand with the ring so people would be able to see that she was linked to me via the engagement. My status was updated to say that I was now committed to one person for the rest of my life. This is where my lovely girlfriend Pam comes in. I pitched the idea on February 13, 2007 and thought that on Valentines Day we could play the perfect online prank. So on the evening of the 14th, we took a photo of her hand with an engagement ring on it. Her status read that she was saying yes and that she was now engaged to a certain Gabe Hernandez. As early as 10 minutes after the profiles were changed, people were commenting on our pages. The quickest were just mere acquaintances. At the last minute, our guilty consciences led us to let certain close friends know the truth and for them to uphold the secret. Many of them felt the need to help out my project by adding a certain credibility throught their comments and congratulations.
 
 
Eventually this got out of hand. Pam presumably has a better conscience than me as she wanted to cease tricking people for the sake that she felt they would be hurt by the news of the engagement being a farce. This also began to consume us. We lost track of who knew it was real and who knew it was fake and so we just kept lying to everyone. The it got out of hand when friends of my parents contacted them to congratulate them on my engagement. Another problem arose when the priest of the church both Pam and I attend approached us and tried to enroll us in marriage preparation seminars. Lying to a man of the cloth is a very difficult thing to do. Then rumors spread that we were engaged because Pam was expecting. This was the best speculation as it made sense. The problem with this project was that it was difficult to document. The only existing documentation is the internet responses. All the other evidence is anecdotal. There truly was no way to capture what people wre not willing to say to Pam and I unless we had assigned a third party to dictate all gossip. This project could be recreated very easily. My suggestion would be to have someone pose as a reporter for a school publication doing a story on young engagements. At this point, people would be willing to be quoted, however, it is undetermined if they would still say what they thought.