What is online identity?
Wikipedia clarifies an online identity as a social identity that network users establish in online communities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_identity). Donath mentions that a single person can create multiple electronic identities that are linked only by their common progenitor, that link, though invisible in the virtual world, is of great significance (Donath, 1996). In the reading, Donath also tries to find out the relationship among multiple personas sharing a single progenitor. Considering the fact that we are living in the information age, a lot of people start their daily routine start with checking the emails, and webpages and finish their days with checking the emails and the web pages’ posts. By experiencing the online life as a big part of their lives, people can find their new identities in a new space called cyberworld, and moreover, they try to generate multiple identities and keep developing them as parts of themselves. This phenomenon can be looked at as a challenge of their stable identities in a real life. Therefore, we all can have new ‘me’ in online community using avatar though it is a completely different self as compared to who I am in a real life. Avatar, which is a graphic icon presenting myself online for web chats, 2D or 3D online games and even more for cyber-shopping and cyber-education. The use of avatar becomes broad and various on the cyber world. In the past, people were attracted only for anonymity, but in modern days, they feel like expressing themselves more in the cyber world through the avatar. Thus, this popular graphic technology called avatar was only available as Ready-made characters which we could only combine with few online items, but now more various types of avatars are available, thus users can make their unique avatar in virtual communities.
Trans-gendered Avatar
By using the avatar, people can show themselves as a completely different self as their real lives. Interestingly, many of online users even present themselves as a different gendered avatar. A male web user make up a female avatar online and interact with other web users online. He tries to talk like a female online and express the avatar with pretty and girly accessories. The problem which could be occurred here is the confusion between his real identity and virtual identity. As much time he spends online as a girl, his real-world identity can get influenced by the virtual identity. One of my gay friends, he actually does this gender swapping a lot in cyber world. In the real world, he does not look like a gay at all, but on the web, he totally turns himself as a girl. I do not think that gender swapping means bad at all, but this certainly is a shocking thing for me. When I first met him at my previous work, I did not know that he was a gay, but after I looked at his online webpages like Myspace, Facebook and Friendster, I found that he was a gay or a person who has a little mental problem. I see this phenomenon with a pretty positive view. Everyone has different personalities and perspectives. Genuinely, they are sensitive and introversive, they can be extroversive and outgoing online if that is what they want to be presented at least in cyber world. Therefore, cyber world can be seen as a new second life for us, and this fact can show our society as a new open world which offers various types of opportunities.
2 comments:
Thats an interesting point of view, since your friend couldn't be the "real" him off line he could go online and act feminine and be who he really wanted to be.
Now that the course if almost over and we have further looked into avatars and Second Life I definitely have a greater understand of your original identity blog. Its interesting that you say how there could be confusion with gender swapping however i think that confusion exists anytime somebody pretends to be somebody they're not. The confusing part isnt the factual information such as gender, its the mental and emotional information of who the person is and why they feel they should change themself in an alternate world.
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