The virtual me

As I’m sure you are well aware from reading our course reader amongst other things, there has been a debate on the idea of online identity. Some believe online identity to be continuous and an extension of our offline identities whereas other theorists such as Sherry Turkle who wrote works such as “Life On The Screen” in 1997 see online identities as being potentially quite different to offline identities.

These conflicting perspectives really got me thinking about this issue. On facebook I list my interests, music tastes, my favourite films and my hobbies which in most ways are very reflective of my offline persona. However, a comment I read by Sherry Turkle stuck with me. She said online we have the opportunity to edit identities and have the opportunity to pick and choose what qualities we want to present and hide from our peers. I don’t know about y’all but in my opinion, she was pretty bang on. I’m certain that we all do this. Avatars, websites like second life or games like Sims allow the user to alter themselves. Second life is notorious for this, users can change their gender, age, race, skin, hair and eye colour and can even choose not to be human!

This is also very true for social network users. On my own profile I take much care to ensure that the pictures posted of me aren’t unflattering and will insist they are deleted or untag myself to maintain an attractive image. Other ways people do this is by talking themselves up, maybe claiming to be more athletic than they really are, or claiming to love Quentin Tarantino films when perhaps they’ve only seen a snippet of one of the Kill Bill films and so forth. The anonymous nature of the internet allows us to do this and to express our identities any which way we want! So, are online identities really all that authentic? I would love to hear your views!

Internet and Identity

Identity on the internet is an interesting topic because of the potential of almost complete anonymity and therefore of multiple identities.

IP logging is main way of tracking who is doing what, and where, on the internet. On sites that don’t do that, someone can run around with several identities, and have conversations with themselves, and who is going to notice?

Multiple identities are a staple in what is referred to as ‘trolling’ online; deliberately provoking arguments and bad blood between users for no other reason that getting that response. By creating multiple identities it’s possible to even play both sides of the argument and keep it going.

Urban dictionary has several definitions of trolls and what they do: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling

The propensity of trolls has raised the need for moderators and other such roles to ‘police’ places on the internet such as message boards, and also leads to the creation of many different systems of rules or posting regulations that members must follow or risked being banned. It’s interesting that even with the freedom the internet offers, which allows for people to feel free enough to create huge amounts of open conflict, more and more regulations are being put in place to help self-police these people, and thereby strip parts of the internet of the freedom and anonymity that make it so different from offline lives.

More mundanely, multiple identities can be used to keep different facets of one’s online life separate. This might simply be using different names, with the person acting no different when using either. Or these identities might be for radically different interests and persona put forth in each just as different. The flexibility the internet offers is still significant, even with the increase in verification and policing that many websites perform.

It will be interesting to see how identity on the internet changes as the internet continues to evolve.

Online Identity:

We establish ourselves in the online sphere through our continued presence and visits or contributions to particular websites. Through the development of social networking sites, we have gained control over our identity, and now have the ability to portray ourselves in the way in which we would like to be seen; something which we have little control over in the physical world. The online sphere allows a new type of freedom, to choose and create your own identity and to place yourself or your opinions in a canvas which is open to interpretation.

This is where we also encounter dishonesty, and scammers/schemers who manipulate the confines of such websites for the purposes of theft or even possibly for voyeuristic purposes. The blank and vast world that is the cyber realm is one which is limitless and faceless, free from obstruction, and quite often free from consequence. And in this situation we see people who set out to advantage and manipulate and deceive others by collecting personal information resulting in identity and monetary theft. It is important as users of these social websites that we do not reveal too much about ourselves, for fear of theft or deception, which can be terrible losses. With antivirus software, and other programmes, situations like this become harder to get into, but nevertheless exist. We have the ability to control how we are portrayed and what we put into the online sphere, so it is essential we limit such information the bare minimum, if we choose not to display ourselves on a public scale.