Who are we portraying ourselves to be online? Some articles suggest that we present who we want to be, others that we present who we are. While both are probably true in some sense, how we appear on the internet is something we need to think about.
Online Identity has become such a crucial part of our everyday lives that there are now two movies about it. The movie “The Social Network” is a documentary about the Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook.
It refers to him as a socially inept nerd who found home in the anonymity of the internet in the early days. This isn’t entirely kind, though somewhat accurate. Who retreated to the web in the early days for friends? Who still does? The people who want to find someone who likes them for them, not for how they look, or act hid behind anonymity and being able to choose who was in their virtual social circle. The article suggest that Social Networking could only have been created by someone who needs a way to remove themselves from a social setting to communicate effectively.
The thing about social networking sites is that they give us a chance to edit and manipulate our ascribed identity in ways that we can’t in face-to-face communication. By being able to control out ascribed identity more, we are able to build a better reflexive identity.
The article linked to above claims that Facebook inevitably makes you expose your true self. The second movie is about a housewife who pretends to be her daughter online, but still expresses characteristics about herself without meaning to.
Social networking has removed us from the eyes of the people who judge us. We are able to stand back and be who we are with typically positive feedback. The negative feedback is usually only given by people who are able to hide behind anonymity.
Where forums exist on the premise of a screenname that allows individuals to feel removed from there actions, major social networking sites like Facebook forces it’s user to have some accountability.
Facebook users are able to select who can see selected posts, who can call them a friend, can whose status they see. It allows us to be ourselves by removing all factors that make us comfortable. We feel safe staring at a screen getting positive feedback all day about who we are and who we want to be.
