Virtual Identity: real or fake?

Image 1: Hiding behind a mask and a computer

in this weeks reading, Laurie McNeill discusses the idea of having an authentic identity as opposed to a ‘fake’ identity especially when it comes to the online world. Mark Zuckerberg’s (the founder of Facebook) statement “you can't be on Facebook without being your authentic self", has opened up a conversation that many professionals are starting to analyse. Are we really our true authentic selves when it comes to being online in a social network?

On Facebook you have an individual profile where you include a photo (profile pic), personal information including your full name, date of birth, where you went to school, all the way down to your favourite movies or hobbies and interests. On the contrary, you have the option to include as much or as little information about yourself. By having the ability to add only selective pieces of information about yourself stands to contest Zuckerberg’s notion of being your authentic self on Facebook.

Let’s take the profile picture for example. There are many photo editing apps out there where you can alter an image. By editing or altering an image of yourself, and then uploading it to Facebook to put as your profile photo, would not be representing your true self. In this week’s lecture Kuttainen states that “Facebook acts as a ‘shadow biographer’ (McNeill) directing users about how selves should be constructed” (Kuttainen, 2016), which is exactly what Facebook is doing. They encourage us to alter our pictures by adding the filters option, so when you upload a photo you have the ability to apply a filter. In reality we can’t apply these type of filters to ourselves unlike Facebook and many other social networks, so it stands to say that being our true authentic selves online is not 100% true. McNeill notes that a Cyborg, in which she defines as “producing selves through/from a human-machine interface” (McNeill, 2012), indicates that we are no longer our authentic human selves but rather a post-human cyborg that hovers on these social networks.

References:


Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 6: Networked Narratives. [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

 McNeill, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social Networking Sites and Posthuman Auto/Biography. Biography 35(1), 65-82. University of Hawai'i Press. Retrieved September 2, 2016, from Project MUSE database.

Image Credit: Wonder How To. Retrieved from: http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/95/41/63479609026720/0/create-fake-online-identity-for-website-registrations-just-one-click.1280x600.jpg