technoculture314-09

Many scholars (such as Goffman) have described 'identity' as a type of performance, one which is fluid and malleable according to who you are performing to at a given moment. Many of us might come to think of our CMC's as safe or even anonymous due to the personal and intimate way in which we express ourselves on such sites. However, the fact that they are accessible to an entire worldful of people makes me wonder how possible it is to extend the same ideas of identity as a performance to websites such as Facebook.

While I do agree with the idea that identity is a certain kind of performance- it dictates the ways in which we view and present ourselves to other people, Facebook seems to challenge this idea. To the extent that we are only given a limited space with which to present ourselves to a multitude of different people, perhaps sites like Facebook really do help us to discover our 'true' or 'fixed' identities. It's like that old saying "you can't please everybody", on CMC sites like Facebook, you literally can't. For example, I have always performed a certain identity to my boss as mature and hard working. This particular "window" into my personality has recently been challenged on Facebook by the photo's that a friend has posted up. These photo's show us skiving off at work, taking photo's in mirrors, and generally having the type of fun that we're not allowed to have (but are supposed to look like we're having) in retail. If my boss saw these photo's she'd flip out, and the truth would be uncovered that maybe I'm just not the 'ideal' retailer.