Social network profiles and “taste” at melanie mcbride online

As social networking becomes more and more popular, I am increasingly curious about the accountability of user-selected signifiers as an authentic thin slice of identity. As an aesthetically-inclined person, I’ve always been interested in the notion of “taste” - specifically, who and what defines it and what it really says about who we are. Additionally, how does that investment change according to age and identity formation?

For example, if I list Ulysses as a favourite book, am I a Joyce lover or a pretentious snob? According to Hugo Liu, a researcher of digital aesthetic theory, the aesthetics of our self representation are predominantly defined by our investments in social and cultural capital.

“Why does one like what one likes? According to the literature reviewed below, one’s tastes are influenced both by socioeconomic and aesthetic factors. Socioeconomic factors—such as money, social class, and education—can shape tastes, because access to cultural goods may require possession of these various forms of capital. Aesthetic factors—such as paradigms of personality (e.g., degree of sarcasm), sentiment (e.g., utopian versus dystopian), and identity (e.g., degree of fashionableness)—define motifs toward which one’s tastes may gravitate.”