*I was reluctant to expose my visible Muslim-ness* #TheProfileProject #6
This is my first anonymous story for #TheProfileProject – sharing a very personal and salient narrative about a Twitter profile picture. I’ve chosen the image of a carnation to draw on the idea that we wear something distinctive when we meet a stranger for the first time. I hope to meet this person ‘in real life’ soon: “There are probably only a handful of active tweeps in my timeline who do not use their face photo as their profile image; and I am one of them. My primary reason is the attempt to remain as anonymous as I possibly can, and to protect my personal privacy as far as possible. This may appear to be a paradox, because I have a public profile (description). However, my full name is a very common one (I personally know four people with the exact full name) and if someone did not know my career path, they would not know it is me! “I also do not want to waste time changing profile pictures every few months; I have a purpose of being on Twitter which is to engage with practitioners in my field, experts and colleagues; and for that purpose I do not see why a “real image” of me is relevant or important. However, I must admit, that when I first started using Twitter, I was hesitant to place a real face photo of myself. This is because I wear a headscarf and I am a very visible Muslim. I am proud to be Muslim; and I know that the vast majority of my followers are not anti-Muslim. But I also have first-hand experience of the...
*I’m hiding behind the screen with my 140 characters* #TheProfileProject #5
Vic Cutting tells the story behind her Twitter and Facebook profiles: CREATIVE ACTIVITY IS MORE THAN A MERE CULTURAL FRILL, IT IS A CRUCIAL FACTOR OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE, THE MEANS OF SELF-REVELATION, THE BASIS OF EMPATHY WITH OTHERS; IT INSPIRES BOTH INDIVIDUALISM AND RESPONSIBILITY, THE GIVING AND THE SHARING OF EXPERIENCE Tom Hudson (1979), British Columbia Exhibition of Children’s Art catalogue. “I picked up this post card at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park a few years ago, and all I knew about it was that it had “Cardiff College of Art Foundation Studies: Experimentation with materials 1968” written on the back, from the collection of Tom Hudson. “It was at a time where I was considering retraining as an art therapist and was obsessing about the importance of process art, especially within my work with young people. Tom Hudson’s ideas resonated with me. “I like it as my Twitter photograph, I like that it is a personal image, and intimate, although that’s the opposite of how I feel about twitter. My Facebook profile is full of photos of my kids and funny (to me) thoughts that I want to share with my friends. “My Facebook profile photos are consistently oblique, but that’s because work advise us not to have photographs of ourselves. So it’s interesting to find photos that have personal meaning but don’t show people. I enjoy taking photos, I find it relaxing, a creative activity, going back to the original quote. I liked finding the shadow of me in the leaves, me – yet not me. A leaf yeti. “Twitter is more about politics, work and music for...
*I was angry, very angry* #TheProfileProject #4
Sue Sibbald tells the story behind her Twitter profile: “I was angry, very angry because a psychiatrist had told me I had a diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder but the therapy I thought would help me was not available to me. My local mental health NHS trust did not provide it. “I was on Facebook at the time and discovered many other people could not access therapy of any sort all over the country so I decided to get active and set up a Facebook page to try to campaign for better services. I thought better to channel my anger in a productive way. “I thought up the name one Sunday afternoon, it was a bit of a eureka moment – Borderline Personality Disorder Fighting For Services or ( For F***s sake) It still makes me giggle because it’s a bit naughty, provocative, challenging. “I soon went on to Twitter and began to tweet about the lack of services and in doing so made friends. I found my peers and that mattered. “I decided to use the fist as my avi as it signified the fight, against lots of odds and it just felt right. I think it showed my anger also that was bubbling up inside. I often say I am driven by my anger or how unfair life can, be but I change it into something positive. “A funny story – the first fist I used I nicked from somewhere but the guy found out so my now wife Julie made this one for me. “I subsequently set up a tweetchat called #BPDChat and this is still going...
*A flippant and careless attitude* #TheProfileProject #3
Boff Whalley tells the story behind his Facebook profile picture: “When I was at grammar school in Burnley I was obsessed by music. For me it was an era when Bowie and Bolan gave way to a world of weird and wonderful rock music, from Zappa and the Bonzos and then headlong into the shuddering shock of punk, with all its fantastic possibilities. “I loved music. I listened to it, lived and breathed it, but couldn’t play an instrument. “My music teacher at school was a camp old Oxbridge luvvie who smoked cigarettes out of the window during class and spent whole lessons forcing us to listen to his gramophone recordings of classical pieces. At the end of my year as a 15 year-old he marked my report sheet: second to bottom of the class, 14th out of 15, and added the comment: ‘A flippant and careless attitude. Low assesment in term.’ “I grew to love that sentence. Twenty-five years after it was written I published an autobiography and decided that I wanted that sentence on the front cover. It summed up what I felt about how I was taught music. Casey, as the photographer who took the picture for the front cover of the book, wrote the sentence on my bare chest in red lipstick. She has beautiful writing! “Then just this last year I took a photo of my 5 year-old son Johnny in our camper van. Me and him were on a road trip to Scarborough and we were playing games and being silly. He was flexing his muscles and being a superhero. When I saw...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
