The Facebook Doppelgänger Meme Is Embarrassing
Please, everyone, for the love of God: Stop changing your Facebook profile pictures to your famous "doppelgänger." It's revealing some uncomfortable truths about our friendship.
All Facebook memes are essentially narcissistic—which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. It's when the narcissism merges with the oversharing and the need for validation and approval that I start seriously considering taking myself off Facebook. I don't want to play every time someone asks for my first memory of them. I don't need to know 25 things I didn't know about you—there is a reason, undoubtedly, that these are things you heretofore kept secret. Or which Little Miss character you are. And even though it was ostensibly to raise awareness for breast cancer, I didn't need to know the color of the bra you were wearing.
Still, most of those memes are essentially harmless. The Doppelgänger meme, though, has been revealing a little too much about my Facebook friends' psychology since it started last week. It's a delicate, awkward dance, right? If your friend replaces her profile picture with Kate Hudson, are you supposed to tell her that she doesn't resemble her? At all? No, right? Awkward! But a fake "OMG you do look so much like her!" is just as awkward. There is no right answer, just as there is no right answer to the question of who your Doppelgänger is. Unless you turn it into a big joke—hey, look, I think I look like Al Bundy! Oh yes, ha ha ha, you are funny person.