Who are you online? Are you smarter? Cooler? Better looking? Are you yourself? Am I? Well sure we are, right? Is it possible for us to be anyone else?
Golly, you guys sure do ask some tough questions! Truth is, there is no easy or straight answer. No matter what persona we wear online, there is always some element of ourselves that shows through, but what about the other aspects? You've all heard of and maybe even committed to such acts before; picking only the most flattering pictures to post, changing your displayed age, maybe even saying things you wouldn't normally say- in person that is. Is this consistent fallacy acceptable? It's said that having hundreds of friends on popular social media websites makes creating and keeping closer relationships increasingly difficult. Close relationships are being replaced with multiple distant ones. If you ask me, it all adds up the same. A couple big friends seems to be about equal to many small ones. Personally, I prefer a few select close friends but everyone's different and I don't much care what you do or how many friends you have so go ahead and knock yourself out. Times are changing and we are changing along with them- in many different directions. I can't tell you who is and is not your "friend"; I will, however, live and let live.
Good points here. You give us more questions than answers and that's probably how it should be. I think, personally, that whenever we make our "self" public, we are playing a role. It can be online, it can be in the classroom, it can be with a friend...it is, I think, all relative to a certain degree. Some people are "on" all the time, public vs private selves etc. Perhaps online identities are no different than public personas then. Ah well, live and let live, I agree :)
ReplyDeleteI like how you question the audience. Good technque to get the audience to think, sure did get me thinking about my online idenity.
ReplyDeleteChris-not sure if you noticed, but you are the featured "Facebook blog of the week". I posted a link to your blog on our class facebook page.//lm
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