IDENTITY ISSUES!
Are you the one your friends think you are, or do you hide your true identity?
As promised, in order to become ‘Liberated’, I have started to ‘pimp’ and use my Facebook profile. First, I needed to accept and add some of my friends to my Facebook page. Second, I needed to add a photo and some personal information such as; relationship, sports, music, movies, education, contact information, religion and political preference. Some of these questions made me wonder how people will fill them in. Do they tell about their ‘real’ religion or their ‘real’ political preference? Can you trust all the information that people fill in? For example; voting for the PVV is quite an ‘issue’ these days, does everyone fill in this information honestly?
Furthermore my profile’s picture, which one did I had to choose? Nobody wants to look ‘ugly’ on his or her Facebook’s profile picture, right? But how many times do you experience that someone looks very 'beautiful' on their social networking profile and when meeting the same person in real life it is a disappointment?
It made me think about the way I want to present and identify myself online. I did not want to pretend to be someone I am not, but I also wanted to present myself in a positive manner. In class we learned that there are two types of identities in an online setting, namely: ‘Online identity’ and ‘Identity online’. At first you think what is the difference between the two is, but there is a big difference. The first one ‘Online identity’ refers to conceptualization of the individual’s self-persona. On websites like 'Second Life' and 'Habbo Hotel' people can develop a persona which is completely different than their offline persona. Everything is possible; you can even swap gender.
The second ‘Identity online’ is an identification and self-presentation of the individual on the internet. For example; your personal profile on Facebook or Hyves. It has more or less an open character, because people have access to your personal information and photo’s. However, the honesty of these ‘open’ social networking sites is also questionable.
How do you present yourself online and what is your identity; an ‘Online identity’ or an ‘Identity Online’ or do you have both?
Everybody on Facebook looks reliable because it has an open character, but is this social medium as honest as we all think? I do not know, but what I do know is that it is very popular and a lot of people use it to communicate with their friends. Clearly, people trust Facebook.
On the other hand, what I am I talking about. In offline settings we can also not randomly trust everybody. There are a lot of people who pretend to be something they are not and try to hide their true identity. In some cases we can even experience and enjoy people actually doing this. For example on television there are numerous programs which have as main subject; deception and secrets. I am a huge fan of ‘Wie is de Mol’ and every week, with many others, I try to unmask the true identity of the one who tries to sabotage everything. Furthermore, Net 5 has launched a new program called: ‘Secret Story’, where 15 people in one house try to hide their secrets and true identity for the others. It is even called; ‘The house of secrets’.
For the ones who do not know these programs, watch these videos:
Who to trust and not to trust, it is very hard in this virtual world. However, I think a person makes up their own mind whether someone is his or her ‘true’ self. Therefore I would say; enjoy all these offline programs, like or dislike Facebook, let’s take life not too serious in this case but make it fun to unmask the ‘dishonest’ ones, for example with an exciting television program like ‘Wie is de mol'.
Talk to you again next week!
Ps. I am very curious to know if you have any ideas or some interesting facts of ‘Wie is de Mol’, because every week I have another main suspect…
