Meeting “New” People

Meeting someone new in the 2000’s was a lot different than meeting a new person today. This is especially true on college campuses where people are invloved in Greek life, extracurriculars, clubs, and teams. If you think about it, everyone on a college campus probably has a mutual friend with the person sitting next to them no matter how large the campus.

This can be largely contributed to the amount of information that can be found about people on the internet, especially in photos. In particular, Instagram nearly shows every detail about a person’s life, depending on how much the person behind the profile shares. Even if a person is on “private,” it is still possible to see a picture of someone on Instagram as well as their name by the pictures they are tagged in.

That’s where mutual friends plays a huge role in social media, especially Instagram. For example, say my friend John from my hometown who allows me to follow him on Instgram regularly posts pictures of a guy name Jimmy. Since I follow John, I now know what his friend Jimmy looks like, and probably know a lot about him depending on the caption of the picture/location/etc.

So think about it, wouldn’t it be pretty embarassing to meet Jimmy in person one day and already know who he is and what he’s like. Yes, it would! This happens to so many students and people our age. I can think of multiple occassions of moments when I “meet” someone that I already know a lot about. Before social media, the only way to meet someone was a formal handshake. Now, it is simply a mutual friend on Instagram.