Loose regulations, instant messaging, and contemporary identities – all a part of the wonder we have named Internet. As the popularity of virtual worlds and social networking sites rapidly increase, the question of identity is ever more pervasive.
Media has transformed our society to one filled with media-saturated inhabitants. If you do not have an iPhone, you have a cell phone or maybe a landline. If you are into music you might listen to it on your iPod, Walkman, or why not your radio? More of a visual person? Not to worry, society offers an array of “visualities” such as movies, news and photographs. With the multitudinous ways of identity expression, how can people know which one best represents their selves in essence? In her book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Sherry Turkle introduces us to the historical evolution of society’s view on identity. In the past, it was treated as a fixed and stable thing, which Turkle claims came as a result of traditional gender roles and monotonous labor (255). Today, identity is about multiplicity and fluidity. One can create a “human being” in Second Life, deciding everything from clothes to friends to behavior. Another online phenomenon that has come to recruit over 500 million members is Facebook (Statistics | Facebook). What is one’s identity in this global village (McLuhan 16)? How does one decide whether to make a copy of one’s “real self” or not? This choice is subjective, which makes people the masters of their own identities. “I think I […] have been changed several times since [this morning]” (154), writes Marshall McLuhan who is inclined with Turkle on the concept of “the fragmented self” (Turkle 259). McLuhan and Turkle have a point. Just think about all the conversations a person works through in one single day. Phone service providers, parents, children, professors and significant others may be some of these, all awaiting various personalities from a person. Moreover, the outlets in which people behave – schools, restaurants, at home and at the gym – are as controlling in defining people’s identities. At home, a person might be “the quiet one”, in school the “disciplined and talkative one” and at the gym “the hard-working one”. These three situations equal three different personalities. Just because one is talkative in a classroom, does not necessarily mean that he/she behaves the same way when at home. A persons’ behavior is defined by the context they find themselves within.
This leads to another approach to the construction of identity – Goffman’s dramaturgy He originated his theory in Cooley’s “looking glass self”, using a theatrical metaphor for explaining behaviors and identities of people. In privacy, we take on our “backstage” role that in turn transforms into our “frontstage” role when in public (Meyrowitz 2).. Let us use Second Life and Catholic girl Sara as an example. Sara is homosexual and has always been scared of not being accepted by her Catholic “audience” if coming out. Thus, she looks for an environment that might accept her background self. Thus, she creates an avatar that is lesbian but in this world actually engages in a relationship with another girl. Sara’s backstage self IRL becomes her front-stage self is in the virtual world. In other words, Second Life gives her an opportunity to make her “private” self a “public” one, just in another world, or “situation”. This is what Meyrowitz refers to when claiming that “separation of situations allows for separation of behaviors”, these “situations” being equivalent to Goffman’s stages and other worlds such as Second Life (41).
Other media forms that have done the same thing are social networking sites. Facebook for instance allows people to interact and share their life stories through status updates, writing on walls and befriending people from all over the world. If a person chooses to share private matters on their profile, a new front region is created “using the concepts of back and front region as a base […] called ‘middle region’” (Meyrowitz 47). Despite the fact that you have a username and password keeping your privacy and protecting you from intruders, the Facebook Corporation owns the legal rights to “use, copy, publish, stream [and] store” anything posted on your account (Walters).In plain English – Facebook offers no privacy. There is no way for us living in this media-saturated society and having a back-stage persona, seeing as we are under constant exposure in one way or another (Meyrowitz 48). With new media of communication come new identities (McLuhan 69, Meyrowitz 3).
Looking at all these identity theories simultaneously, there are some subtle differences. Turkle advocates multiplicity and fluidity (Turkle 268), as does McLuhan when he writes about “the fragmented singular self” (McLuhan 144). Goffman’s and Meyrowitz theories were both formed before the emergence of Internet. They both concentrated on situational relativity, yet Goffman in a more dramaturgical way. They meant that different situations (Goffman: Stages) demand many different public identities (front stagesregions) directed by the audience’s interests. Meyrowitz states that media almost completely takes away the aspect of a back-stage (48), whereas Goffman does not spend much time discerning the media (4). Facebook is amazing in this instance, because it leaves people with many questions. The back-stage and the front-stage have now become one. The multiplicity of personalities depending on situation has also become one, as we interact with many people across situations on the website. People befriend their professors, parents and grandparents. Maybe some even have unknown people on their friend list. No matter how many friends one has, it is close to impossible not to have Facebook friends with which you interact with through various personalities. Now, some might that the overlapping of one’s multiple personalities is positive because it creates a possibility to find one’s real self. Conversely, others might argue that it is almost dangerous having to deal with multiple personalities in the same forum. How are you able to cope with the stress?
In a society where “success is defined by keeping up with e-mails” (Krotoski), face-to-face interaction has been placed last on people’s to-do-list. Texting/BBMing tops the list, followed by texting, tweeting and facebooking, then e-mailing and lastly calling. Have people become afraid of encountering other people because of identity confusion, or is it just a question of laziness and convenience? Theorists have repeatedly taken on the theme of identity, trying to prove their point through examples and studies. Today, a universal definition of the word is still missing. Leaving me with one conclusion that feels as cliché as a cliché can get – it is all relative.
I bet you wish you had
Jovana Obradovic.
