A famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner pictured a dog sitting in front of a computer and the caption: "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." It underscores something that is even more apparent in this age of almost omnipresent social media: when you're online you can be anybody you want to be. But, as The National's Rob Garratt noted this week, the way people choose to present themselves in their WhatsApp profile pictures can say a lot about them – sometimes more than they think.
Garratt gives examples of how people haven’t thought through the message they are sending when they post a photo of them hugging a bottle, sitting in a cockpit or with a D-list celebrity.
The thing is that the picture you put online may mean one thing to you and something entirely different to someone else. You may believe that a photo of Mr Bean where your own face ought to be makes you look like a person with a good sense of humour, but somebody else may just assume that you’re a Mr Bean.
