Despite my personal lack of involvement in the social media world, I am continually fascinated with it primarily insomuch as a tool for the presentation of oneself. As David Buckingham argues in Youth Identity, and Social Media, social media tools allow users to create another version of their identity in public. This need to publicly validate one’s identity comes with the cost of having to make choices which will form this identity. This process leads to insecurity about how others will receive this identity. St. Vincent, in her song “The Neighbors,” simply and elegantly articulates these concerns.
While St. Vincent doesn’t discuss the implications of choices made in identity information in social media, she does establish the fundamental concerns all users face. “Oh no! What would your mother say? / Oh no! What would your father do? / Oh no! What would the neighbors think? / Oh no! If they only knew.” The insecurities and uncertainties associated with maintaing a public identity have always existed, but they have even greater relevance in the world of social media. As social media sites, Facebook in particular, push for more and more user transparency, what we chose and chose not to say about ourselves remain major concerns. Even posting strictly utilitarian information on Facebook such as a news story contributes to online identity formation. Therefore every online action must grapple with “what the neighbors would think.”
As we continue to share and post information we build a personal brand. The Velvet Underground and Nico, in their classic “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” illustrate this process.
The lines “And what costume shall the poor girl wear, to all tomorrow’s parties? / A hand-me-down dress from who knows where, to all tomorrow’s parties / And where will she go and what shall she do when midnight comes around?” serve as examples of the types of questions when maintaing an online presence. On Facebook, every musician, TV show, movie, book, and page one “likes” contributes to brand formation.
This process is further complicated by the nature of connections on Facebook. The average user has several-hundred friends, not all of who are necessarily close, offline connections. As such, much of this brand-building is the main source through which other users learn about a person. These types of connections are reminiscent of The WELL, a community in which most people did not know one another face-to-face at all. Instead their online identities were their only identities. Even though data shows that most users use social media tools to reinforce pre-existed offline connections, the importance of online impression management is still vital, especially in cases when users’ connections are strictly online.
While it may seem counterintuitive that the opinions of offline connections are of any importance, our voyeuristic tendencies cause us to be endlessly fascinated with one another. Joy Division’s “Atrocity Exhibition” serves as an excellent musical illustration of these natural tendencies which social media exacerbate.
The chorus, “This is the way, step inside” beckon appeals to the voyeur in all of us. The lines “...doors open wide / Where people had paid to see inside / For entertainment they watch his body twist / Behind his eyes he says, ‘I still exist.’” remind me of the inherently consummatory nature of voyeurism, but go a step further.
The protagonist in the song wants to reaffirm that he “still exists,” implying that the person we are watching is not the real him. This lyric articulates the conflict between between presentation online and reality. Ultimately, an online profile can never be a true representation of the person, no matter how hard we may try to make it so.
SONGS FEATURED IN THIS POST:
ARTICLES FEATURED IN THIS POST:
Buckingham, David (2008). Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rheingold, Howard (1993). The Virtual Community. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Vargas, Jose Antonio (2010). The Face of Facebook Opens Up. New York, NY: The New Yorker.
No comments:
Post a Comment