How many times have you met someone over the internet, had conversations with them, saw their extreme or very exuberating pictures under their profile and when you met that person they were nothing like what they presented themselves? Or when you did meet them in person, you could tell that they were actually trying to act out how they projected themselves to be on the internet? This unfortunately happens to thousands of people on a daily basis. People abuse their online identities to make others believe that they are not who they really are. Abuse is sort of a harsh word. People take advantage of the fact that they can create a personality and a "character" of someone who they wish that they could be.
Being apart of an online community does not always have to be a bad thing. I am not implying that it is. I am just bringing out the fact that there are so many of us who take full advantage of the internet and these online communities. Just about everyone has at some time or another gave a little false information about themselves in a profile or a picture or even just in a caption. But my point is being brought out by those people who make a whole profile about some fictional person and make this person seem so real so that they can meet different varieties of people and talk to people who they might have never had the chance of speaking with. The tricky phenomenological issue with real versus fantasy self is this: what is one's true identity? We usually assume it must be the self that you present to others and consciously experience in your day to day living. But is that the true self? Many people walk around in their f2f lives wearing "masks" that are quite different than how they think and feel internally (Suler, 2002).
I'll admit, I was one of the many faithfuls on facebook and myspace. The difference between me and most of the cyber world was that I was totally honest with my profiles. Because of my honesty, I meet a lot of people that were like me and had the same values and interest. On the other hand, being honest caused me a lot of frustration and unenjoyment of these online communities. First it started out with the false impressions of people on facebook. With facebook, you can see exactly who your talking to because most of your friends go to the same school that you are going to. I would meet somebody new and when I finally saw them on campus, it was an astonishment because the person that they presented themselves to be wasn't really the person that they were in real life. I went through this a couple of times. The person was not really outgoing as they mad themselves seem, or they weren't as fun as they made themselves seem, or in some cases they weren't even the person they had themselves as in the picture on their profile. After going through this problem more than just a couple times, I decided that I would save myself the trouble of being in a online community and just leave facebook and myspace alone. I still use aim, but aim can be just as bad. There is no pictures with aim and so you never really know who you could be talking to.
Not all people see the virtual community from my point of view though. Some people believe that it is exciting and important to society and people's self confidence because it allows people to see themselves in another light with a different attitude. "Identity in online environments are still poorly understood. As online cultures becomes an increasing part of everyday culture, it becomes more and more important for us to understand how it affects who we are." (Berman, 1999) Online culture allows people to expand their personalities and create new "thems." They create new confidence in themselves and transfer that confidence to their real lives.
To me, the whole cyber internet communities is fake and I'll never really trust it. So that is why I constantly pose the question, Was that really you?
Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved February 23, 2007 from Ublearns.buffalo.edu
Sutler, J.R. (2002). Identity Management in Cyberspace: Level of Fantasy or Reality. Retrieved February 23, 2007 from www.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/identitymanage.html
Berman (1999). Your online Identity: Researchers study Human Interaction online through game played in virtual community. Retrieved February 23, 2007 from gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/TGAME.html
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