Building Identity Online
Given that I’m no longer present on Facebook, I was skeptical about how I might respond to this blog prompt. However, I am active on Twitter and Tumblr, and while they do not have the traditional profile view as Facebook they are still projections of self. First, I believe it is important to mention that as a Twitter user I have two accounts – a private one for friends and, oddly enough, work, and an alternative one for this class. My Tumblr situation is much the same: I have one blog I post on for a class and another which is for personal writing, photography, and general debauchery. The private one is littered with images on naked girls, tattoos, bicycles, potty-mouth hip hop, and intimate blogs about my oh-so-cool 21-year-old life. If my Business of Media professor stumbled upon this blog instead of the one detailing the finances of the magazine industry, I'm sure he'd be a little more than surprised. I believe this is a strong example of what boyd and Marwick are talking about when they discuss “context collapse”. By separating my accounts, I am able to project one image to my friends, peers, and select followers and another (completely different) image to my classmates and professor. I recently started following (on Twitter) a couple writers at my internship, and they in turn requested to follow me. While I do use this account to track news stories, it’s also my outlet for snide remarks and the occasional, “I miss my ex”. These projections, while normally intended for friends, end up on my coworkers’ timelines, creating the context collapse discussed in “Social Steganography: Privacy in Networked Publics”.
Aside from these formats, I also maintain an OKCupid profile. Newly single, I am not very engaged with the platform and therefore my profile is vague and lacking much depth. I figure if the little that I have posted about myself is intriguing, than a person messaging me must be truly interested in knowing more. I’m a bit apathetic as to what happens on OKCupid as I don’t really want to meet other people, I just feel obligated to. Is the construction of such a profile an act of false identity then?
I remember hen I did have a Facebook profile, I carefully selected the quotes, books, music, and photos I posted to represent me. I don’t believe the selection of certain things makes you necessarily less genuine, though I understand how the act of leaving certain titles out is a sort of censorship. On the other hand, I don’t see how one could possibly convey the entirety of himself or herself on a site like Facebook or OKCupid. Isn’t that why people hang out offline, to get to know a person better? Can you really know someone from there online profiles alone? In addition to the careful selection, there was also quite a bit of updating taking place depending on changes in identity: a new hair color, a fresh tattoo, the introduction of a relationship. Toward the end of my Facebook life, I was mainly using the site to share articles and photographs I found interesting. Since the birth of my Tumblr page, however, all these posts have found a new home. Facebook is dead to me. Perhaps I feel I no longer need to keep tabs on my high school friends nor really care anymore about projecting a certain tailored image to 900 "friends". Maybe I've outgrown the platform.
Sarah.