Social Bookmarking Soulmate Post
After going through scores of social bookmarking fanatics, I began to give up hope. I would never find my social bookmarking soul mate. Was there not a single person out there who shared my curiosity about conformity and its affect on identity? I couldn’t believe it.
Using Delicious, Citeulike, and Stumbledupon, I searched and searched. I spotted some hopefuls, but no one worthy of the label of being my soul mate. Through Citeulike.com I found Elenaa. She tagged articles using the keywords I was searching for. With a mere six articles in her library, Elenaa she lacked the breadth and substance I was looking for in this relationship.
I admit I was narrow minded when searching for social bookmarkers. I mainly searched for articles tagged with ‘conformity’ and ‘identity’. You could say I was not willing to meet my soul mate halfway – I wanted this social bookmarker to present him/herself to me. I thank my lucky stars that despite my ignorance, I was able to come across Djcurly. Her interests seemed vaguely similar to mine.
You could say I was settling by allowing Djcurly to be my soul mate. It wasn’t love at first sight, but I gave her a chance.
She surprised me.
With a library of 115 articles, Djcurly possessed the substance I was looking for. These articles were tagged with key words such as, “conformity”, “group emotion”, “emotion perception”, “prejudice”, and “self-categorization”. She also seems to have many articles dealing with abortion. Glancing at her repertoire of articles, I convinced myself that she was gradually earning her title of “social bookmarking soul mate”.
Djcurly posted 115 posts from 2007 to 2010, averaging about three to four posts per month. Her tags are very well organized – there isn’t an article in her library that doesn’t contain at least one tag. And actually, most contain multiple tags making it almost effortless to determine the purpose of the article. It appears that she has commented on some of the articles she posted but these are private and hidden from my view. However, I am able to see a one-to-five star rating (five stars indicating a “Top priority!”) Djcurly has applied to each of her articles.
Under the tag, “conformity”, Djcurly bookmarked an article by Packer that examines the difference between group members who choose not to conform to the norm and do so by distancing themselves from the group, and those who choose not to conform in order to challenge or change the norm. Packer gives perspective on the various motivations behind defying the normative behavior. In my first post I explain that I go against the norm because that is where my passion lies. In Packer’s terms, I am most likely choosing not to conform by distancing myself from my “group”.
Under the tag, “identity”, Djcurly bookmarked an article by Ellemers, et al. that examines the different conditions under which “self” and “identity” are affected by the groups we associate ourselves with. It describes the “personal self” vs. the “collective self”, and the connection between our social identity and the commitment to the groups we belong to. Ellemers also brings up the interesting concept of self-stereotyping. They discuss the convenient nature of stereotyping and the idea of self-stereotyping, which authors indicate as the perception of seeing yourself as similar the group so that you may remain as part of the group. Such ideas of the personal vs. collective self and our social identity may be topics I wish to explore in future blog posts. I could write about how my personal self seems to differ from my collective self. However, this may be steering too far from the psychological approach I am aiming to take, and more towards a philosophical approach.
Djcurly provides an academic perspective to my blog readers. In my blog, I write about my experiences about feeling like an outsider because of my lack of interest in conforming. Djcurly’s tagged articles describe the potential psychological reasoning behind my decision. Because my academic background is rooted in the sciences, it is comforting to know that there is experimental evidence to back up some of my actions.
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