technoculture314-09

This week’s lecture reminded me of the “friendship books” my friends and I used to write in back in high school, which were similar to the way nowadays on cyberspace we are often asked to identify who we are through the tastes we have. Like Facebook and dating sites, these friendship books asked what our ‘favourite films’ were as well as other tastes we had, only on an actual physical book which got passed around within the school. Identity branding through these simplistic categories was evident even back then but today with the many internet sites that are around, we are asked these kinds of questions more often, so this is a lot more evident and has a lot more effect on the our way identity is constructed and the way we perform that identity. I was as anxious then as I sometimes feel towards describing myself on cyberspace now. So for this reason I agree with Liu’s argument that our tastes are sometimes a performance. The one motivation behind this performance that I am particularly interested in is the motivation of prestige. The tastes people describe on Facebook are sometimes motivated by prestige, that is appearing a certain way, and conforming to what they perceive as the ideal identifier of themselves. This is because I believe today Facebook profiles are such a huge part of who we are, and describing aspects of ourselves that can be critiqued can be quite daunting for some, as they may not want to appear too different from others, particularly for teenagers who are beginning to shape their identity especially in relation to popular culture. I think this idea of prestige on Facebook is a big factor because our friends are often from many different areas of our life, as we belong to many groups and communities, not just one. Appealing to all of these groups can be a difficult task, so can be a vulnerable aspect of sharing our identity with our friends. Identity performance is without a doubt something which some may feel pressure to perform, but is heightened so much more today as a result of new media.