One Body - One Soul - One Hundreds Online Identity
- Hoang Viet Nguyen
- Apr 9, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Apr 21, 2024
(Screenshot taken by me by me April 2024)
My start as a digital sentient being
In the beginning, all it took was, "Hey, I'm gonna switch schools soon, so I won't be able to meet you; have you got anything I can contact you with?" Then I started to use Facebook, then YouTube, then Instagram, then Twitter, and the list goes on.
All of us have used social media or heard of it one way or another. While many times online, what we portray is what we believe to be our true identity and what we are reflecting ourselves. However, that is not always the case, just like how we may talk and act differently depends on which family member or group of friends is on the platform, how we want to portray ourselves in front of our audience, and how we want that specific account to be seen. As such, I believe that how I portray my identity online is vastly different from how I show myself in person.
Smith and Watson (2013:71) said that identity is ever-changing and is a subject, not an essence, and I agreed with that view, as we as individuals always drive to think and to move forward, even though at times we felt that things didn't change. But that isn't the case for time itself, as as time passes, we as individuals will have our own unique experiences, views, ethics, morals, and values, and the journey of figuring out those things and finding yourself is the purpose of life, and this goes in concordance with how we picture ourselves on social media.
An explanation of IDENTITY
In this blog post, I will compare how I represent my identity through my Twitter and Instagram accounts.
On my Twitter account (which I used to have fun with or follow things that were interesting to me), I follow and post things that I find funny or that I like, similarly to how I post a meme picture of a dog wearing a sombrero. In this account, I portray my identity as more funny or humorous, trying to get attention or a reaction with a smile or laughter, both towards the audience and myself.
However, on my study account, the tone of my voice and the things I post are much more formal and academic since, in this identity, I want to express my seriousness and how I think studying should be done. "The presentation of self in everyday life, Goffman (1959) studied gestures and the way an individual composed a version of himself or herself for the world, as mentioned by Marshall (2010:39).
This first account is one where I used to post pictures from the day I started studying at university as a way to keep track of my journey and any special events I had during my journey to becoming a full-fledged adult. In this account, I wanted to only show what I saw in person using pictures that were not edited for the purpose of staying true to the moment. The identity on this account can be seen as a memory or accomplishment that I made. Only posting things that relate to the experiences I went through in Melbourne and things that I did during my university journey is, in itself, the identity I unconsciously tried to paint for myself and any viewer that may come across this account.
Looking at my main account, where I used to post with my friend and keep things updated and in track, you can see that I wasn't keen on showing my real face or sharing my daily activities online aside from the time-to-time posts for my story, which would disappear once the 24 hours were up. In this account, I was much more focused on protecting my privacy and keeping things on a community level, which is why I didn't post anything and only texted and followed my friends.
Indifferenment of Identity
I noticed that in my Instagram account, I mainly have my university friends, while in the Facebook account that I have, it is mainly family and friends from my high school. This showed a clear line on what I wanted to show to who. I notice one thing in common across all online identity I have: all of them are positive, similar to how Kruse et al. (2018:77) say that anything too negative or serious is deemed “too personal” and not fit for an online space like social media.
Overall, I believe it's necessary to have a different online identity based on the account since that is how we want to be seen or what we want to show to people that we know.
Reference:
Kruse, L. M., Norris, D. R., & Flinchum, J. R. (2018). Social Media as a Public Sphere?
Politics on Social Media. The Sociological Quarterly, 59(1), 77. https://doi.org/10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143
Marshall, P. D. (2010). The Promotion and Presentation of the self: Celebrity as Marker of
Presentational Media. Celebrity Studies, 1(1), 39. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392390903519057
Smith, S., & Watson, J. (2013). Virtually Me: A Toolkit about Online Self-Presentation. In
Identity Technologies Constructing the Self Online (p. 71). The University of Wisconsin Press. https://www.academia.edu/14945140/Virtually_Me_A_Toolkit_about_Online_Self_Presentation
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