YOU inc.

Google Images [mash-up by Author]. 

Managing your professional and personal “worlds” online can be a challenge, with the digital environment influencing user’s work and play by "unsettling and liquefying boundaries between the two" (Deuze 2011, 143).

Facebook is a prime example of this, with users typically friending ol’mate drinking buddy and work colleagues alike.  But as Lucy further asks in her blog, is our Facebook self an honest representation of our real self, or do we take liberties to make ourselves appeal to different audiences? Site creator Mark Zuckerberg once quipped: “having two identities of yourself is an example of a lack of integrity”, but I believe this ideology goes against basic Darwinian survival instincts.

Like different languages, we learn different cultural norms and idioms to correspond with different professional and social situations. I believe we need to speak many different "dialects" i.e the "family" dialect or the "party" dialect, to communicate effectively.

Facebook, however,  invites everyone to the party, creating a unified environment with no room for adaptation of tone. While it can be argued that friend acceptance remains at the discretion of the user, lax privacy policies [see Zuckerberg’s own “party” self revealed] means your boss is probably going to see you shot-gun that beer.

And as demonstrated in the clip below, when world’s unintentionally collide, identities are compromised…

(C) NBC

References 


Deuze, Mark. 2011. "Media Life". Media, Culture & Society 33(1): 137-148.

Gawker. 2009. "Facebook CEO’s Private Photos Exposed by the New ‘Open’ Facebook". Accessed April 01, 2011.  http://gawker.com/#!5423914/facebook-ceos-private-photos-exposed-by-the-new-open-facebook/gallery/1

NBC. 1995. "The Pool Guy". Accessed April 01, 2011.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxuYdzs4SS8

Wikipedia. 2011. "Mark Zuckerberg". Accessed April 01, 2011. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg