Currently we all have the ability to broadcast ourselves on Youtube, tweet our every move on Twitter and create a profile about ourselves on Facebook. Especially when I think back to the now archaic social media website Myspace - more popular when I was in middle school and 9th grade - these websites allow one to project the desired version of oneself online that they may not be in real life.
The first aspect of this projected "self" is the profile picture. Being able to present oneself online allows a person to use photos that may not look so much like them, or be them at all. While this has changed since my "friends" have gotten older, I specifically remember the stereotypical Myspace photo - photo taken from above, super side swept hair that's severely parted on onside and covering one eye, with the other eye looking off in the distance. This was meant to make one looks cooler and older, I imagine, but also created the an online phenomenon where no one looked like themselves, and everyone instead looked like some version of a emo version of cousin It.
Not only through photos, but through the information that one presents, a person can weed out the information about them that they deem unworthy to be projected to the outside world from those details about them that they would like to highlight.
Being completely online, this is obviously not modification of the body, but definitely is modification of the self, whatever that "self" may be. It is giving people the opportunity to change the "self" that they are in reality into the "self" that they want to be identified as, and projecting that desired person to society. It's interesting to me that now with these websites, people not only have the ability to physically change themselves through surgery and body modification, but they can choose to alter their being socially using these online mechanisms. They don't cost money, aren't permanent, but are they still dangerous? While body modification may only be a danger to the person that desires the change, is projecting an altered state of oneself online more harmful because it effects all and allows them to perceive "you" as "not you"? Or is this "online you" actually a more proper projection of your being, because it is what you identify as your "true self"?
I thought that this had a great point and I almost wanted to write my post on it as well. The whole idea of self-disclosure on the internet is fascinating. In fact, I did my senior project on self-disclosure through social networking sites. I essentially argued that people tend to portray traits that are stretching the truth or are entirely untrue in order to project the image that they are going for. This coincides with your description of people's profile pictures and the information they post in their biography.
ReplyDeleteWhile the internet may definitely have a sense of anonymity, for many it is a way to stand out as the person that they want to be perceived as. In other cases, it is the anonymity that allows people to reflect that side of them that they would otherwise not be comfortable with doing in real life--for good or for worse.
In my paper, it was also directed more specifically at romantic relationships that start online and move to an offline setting. I theorized that because of how the mechanics of self-disclosure works online that people would develop a certain image of the person they think they are getting to know. Then, lone behold, when they do meet in person they realize how incorrect their perceptions of each other are and the relationship doesn't work out. Obviously leaving out quite a bit, I just thought that your post here was great because it reminded me of the hours and hours of research I did on self-disclosure over the internet.
If anyone finds this topic interesting Guy Debord wrote an excellent paper on it titled "The Society of the Spectacle"
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_the_Spectacle
I take no responsibility for minds blown due to clicking on this link.