Week 3,Topic 1 - b) and c)

The ability of being whoever you want to be appeals to many people as it allows them to experiment with their own personalities, in a way that they would not do so in 'real-life'. 'Second-Life,' with 800,000 registered users, is growing at the extraordinary rate of 20% a month.(Jefferies, S, www.guardian.co.uk) This shows that the idea of being whoever you want to be appeals to many people. I think it can give people confidence to say things they wouldn’t say, and generally express themselves in a way they don’t feel they can do in real life. Personally, I can see this as a positive thing, until people online lie, or deceive people about their identities. It does allow people to disconnect and experience new identities, as described in the lecture, it can create a “better self.” However, I agree with the post-modern views - “technological embodiment of a post structualist theory” (Lister page 167) when the element of escapism is confused with real-life. This is evident within the case study in Lister page 168, the “Cross Dressing Psychiatrist.” Although an experiment, it is clear that these events happen so often online and I think this makes these sites, where identities can be hidden, a problem.

Lecture Week3. Selves and Others Online

It is evident that more and more people use the Internet to keep in touch with friends and family, but also to meet new people. This leads to questions about the type of relationships people have over the Internet. Are these relationships as fulfilling as 'real-life' relationships? Can you really get to know somebody over the Internet? There are stories about couples meeting in Internet chatrooms and getting married, so perhaps to some extent these relationships can develop but there are also stories about people meeting others they have met online and finding out they are not who they think they are.

There is then the question of who we are when we are online. Are we always ourselves, or do we adopt a completely different persona? In a study of an online community, Jennifer Mnookin concluded that users 'need not in any way correspond to a person's real life identity; people can make and remake themselves, choosing their gender and the details of their online presentation' (1996) This shows that people can be whoever they want to be online, and not have to face the consequences of what would happen if they were like that in reality. This is underpinned by the names of some of the sites such as Myspace and Youtube, reinforcing the idea of being there for you to be who you want to be, whether that really is yourself, or someone entirely different.