MySpace and Facebook
Something I’ve always wondered is how useful these sites really are. I’ve used MySpace for a few years now, and I just set up a Facebook a few months ago so I could get in touch with friends and family that don’t have MySpace profiles.
Although the Woodman/Smith chapter for last week did a pretty good job of organizing the types of identity creation—anonymity, pseudo-anonymity, and identity—I don’t think it captured the complexity of how identity roles are shaped online. It’s possible to use a mix of these. It could also be possible to make a false identity while trying to share true identity.
I find that, on MySpace and Facebook, sometimes what ISN’T revealed can be just as important or distorting as what is revealed. I can choose what to show on my profiles. If I want to show my true identity, I can honestly reveal what my general interests are, what books and movies I like to experience. If I (or someone else) wanted to distort public perceptions of our identities, we could write down false information about general interests, post false pictures, and show other false information.
But I can also distort perceptions of my identity by withholding information. In my case, some things are just too personal to reveal on a website, such as relationship matters, dreams (in which case people ought to be GLAD I don’t post my dreams on my profiles), and other matters too private to mention here. In this case, it distorts the online image of myself by giving the impression that that part of myself doesn’t exist, that the part described in the “About Me” section is all that really exists of me.
It’s my way of being honest about my “true identity” but also my way of keeping limited anonymity/pseudo-anonymity. The people who just pop by my profile only see a person with similar interests to everyone else, someone that’s hard to pick out from the crowd. It’s myself, but also just a representation of myself, an avatar that is me but not completely me. Those people who actually know me in real life will see the profile as a representation of my “true identity,” which they already know.
In a related case, the withholding of information might occur because there are things about myself that I don’t know. Everyone has blind spots about themselves. There are probably aspects of my personality that I’m not aware of, but that people who interact with me see plain as day. Online, people at the other screen only see what I see about myself. They can’t observe me directly, so they get a distorted picture of me because they can only see the limited knowledge I have of myself. I observed this with a friend of mine who I kept touch with primarily through email. On his profile, he appears to be a cheerful, gung-ho, American marine. It gives no clue that he can be extremely thin-skinned at times…because he is not aware of it at all. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about this drawback to online profiles, except to be aware of it.
You bring up a very important and interesting aspect of distorting and revealing information as it applies to everyone’s “true identity”. I had never thought of what we choose to reveal about ourselves as only being partly who we are. Not to mention the part we reveal is only as much of our “true identity” as we see in ourselves. Interestingly, you are right in that others may see qualities that we possess that either make or break who we are and what our personality traits are like, but we overlook such qualities because we fail to recognize their existence. I can definitely relate to choosing certain things to reveal and not reveal about myself on Myspace.
I have never truly delved into Myspace and experienced the wonders of what it has to offer. Partially because I am aware of the people in the world that use the information in negative ways such as, stalking individuals they research. Yet, I am also weary of the technology because like you said there are some aspects of my life that I choose to keep either to myself or allow only those that know me really well to know. I obviously am not alone in this thought as both you and Wood and Smith confirm, “manipulating one’s identity is nothing new to Western Culture” (57). Everyone has aspects of their lives they choose to keep private and there is nothing wrong with concealing such personal information. The self that we describe on our webpage’s are simply as you said avatars of certain qualities of who we are. They are created with qualities resembling our real-life qualities and although they may not possess every quality we have this does not make them fake, but simply mock representations.
Brittany said this on January 30, 2009 at 3:21 am
You said a lot of what I did in your blog. About how we don’t intentionally create a false persona, but we do leave parts of our lives out. You made a good point about the “about me” sections, I am sure many people read this and think that what someone says there is basically who they are. But how can you really get to know someone in a paragraph, and it’s really only how they see themselves. Like some people think they are so funny, when they really aren’t. So to them they are telling the truth, but if you were to meet them on the outside, you may think differently.
kimberlythompsoncomm385 said this on January 30, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Do you find a difference between your expression of yourself on Facebook vs. Myspace? It sounds like you enjoy presenting yourself in a fairly straight forward fashion finding some pride in that. I agree that it is good to present “just me” on our profiles. I have thought that this may actually reinforce our self image. As we present ourselves to the world staying true to “who we really are” we can find out even more of who we really are. People who spend time changing themselves may actually be confusing themselves deep down about their sense of self or self esteem. I found the writing on page 64 where author Neil Postman argues, “The ability to communicate anonymously has been a particular thorny issue in CMC. Although anonymity can function to protect people from reprisals it may pose safety risks”. I find the anonymity factor on Myspace interesting and wonder if our ability to “chose” how and what to disclose opens the door too wide so to speak. People who look to present themselves in a way to mislead or take advantage of others may be given too much freedom in communication with little accountability.
Kaaren Provence said this on January 30, 2009 at 7:25 pm
yeah I think you are right in online communication being a mix of the type of identity creation (i.e. anonymity, pseudo-anonymity, and identity). I feel that a lot of time we may have something that is unique about our identities, however people highlight it in such a way that makes it appear to the reader that it is a bigger part of their identity than actually is–I guess it’s an embellishment of something about themselves.
djlosu86 said this on February 1, 2009 at 9:05 pm