Beyond the profile picture : Identity fabrications
Friday, October 16, 2009 by Sean Cho
People are seems to be more familiar these days, with the reconstruction of their virtual identity online and they seemed to be quite comfortable with such process. Rather, people put vast amount of energy and time, in effort of fabricating thier 'self' to look better. Even if this process involves a little exaggeration on the fabrification of a virtual 'self', people seems not to think about it too much.
Since the identity fabrication has become a common thing for people to act on without thinking too much about it, it will be obviously difficult to wholly trust a stranger's identity as it appears on the internet. For example, on the social network sites like MySpace, this identity fabrication
could said to be quite commonly found, like Luke said in the lecture about this person who wouldnt let the other person know of her real age on this dating website, people are increasingly experimenting with their identities. The person who did not want to reveal her real age, perhaps with some other 'real' information about her 'real' identity, have had a bad experience of someone who lied about his/her identity and personality - which is a direct result of this identity experiment phenomenon.
Such process brings concerns for people living in this internet age, as our identities are gradually becoming somewhat 'constructed', not natural. People tend to show some doubt when it comes to relationships, perhaps its something that being online and digitalized brings along with the benefits of it.
Since the identity fabrication has become a common thing for people to act on without thinking too much about it, it will be obviously difficult to wholly trust a stranger's identity as it appears on the internet. For example, on the social network sites like MySpace, this identity fabrication
could said to be quite commonly found, like Luke said in the lecture about this person who wouldnt let the other person know of her real age on this dating website, people are increasingly experimenting with their identities. The person who did not want to reveal her real age, perhaps with some other 'real' information about her 'real' identity, have had a bad experience of someone who lied about his/her identity and personality - which is a direct result of this identity experiment phenomenon.
Such process brings concerns for people living in this internet age, as our identities are gradually becoming somewhat 'constructed', not natural. People tend to show some doubt when it comes to relationships, perhaps its something that being online and digitalized brings along with the benefits of it.