Can a person’s character truly be judged by the content of his or her Facebook timeline (né wall)? Hopefully not, as that stuff tends to be completely mortifying, especially with the passage of time. In a fiendish little video experiment, Mashable recently had some people read their very first Facebook posts aloud on camera.
The results were every bit as awkward and embarrassing as one would hope. Facebook has a remarkable capacity for taking people’s fleeting obsessions, bad decisions, half-formed thoughts, and regrettable jokes and not only broadcasting them to the entire world but also preserving them for years to come, so that future generations can share the shame and humiliation. The participants know what they’re in for here. Merely upon hearing the instructions, one young woman covers her face and says, “Oh my god, I’m so nervous!” She has a right to be: When she reappears a minute later in the video, her first post is revealed as “Thinking about boys.” Yikes.
Others have it worse, though. One man confesses that his first Facebook post reads simply, “Megan, I took your wall’s virginity, bitch!” He does not seem proud of his younger self at that moment, nor should he be. Probably the strangest revelation in this video comes from a woman who finds an old photo of herself and remembers that she once showed up at a birthday party dressed as Paris Hilton, apropos of nothing. “[It] was not a costume party,” she recalls. “I just showed up in that outfit. With the wig.” That’s clearly a violation of the social contract, but other alleged Facebook fails are more of a judgment call. One bearded fellow sheepishly admits, “I posted a link for the trailer for the Chuck Norris film Good Guys Wear Black.” Should he feel bad about this choice? Readers are invited to watch the following and decide for themselves.