Representation of the Self Online

Suler's text provides an interesting perspective on the issue of the self online:

Compartmentalizing or dissociating one's various online identities like this can be an efficient, focused way to manage the multiplicities of selfhood

You can find the quote in context here

Suler discusses the fact that one can express part of one's interests in a certain online community and another part in another one. This helps to fully express all of the different roles that each person plays every day. For example, I am a daughter, a sister, a student, and a lifeguard all in one. These are just a few examples of what popped into my head, but sometimes my roles conflict. Or sometimes I am just not able to express each of these roles to their fullest. In an online community I could pick up on the role that is most important to me or any of the roles. I could focus on an interest of mine and the online community could be the forum for that.

Suler also discusses the idea of integrating online life and offline life. These two parts of a persons life can be very disassociated [which has a negative connotation as Suler points out]. I think that hiding the two parts from each other can cause problems. It is interesting that in one part Suler is talking about how the internet can allow for compartmentalizing. And yet at the same time this can be unhealthy if it is overdone. I think that generally online life and offline life can be and should be integrated. Each one provides different mediums for expression. The mediums should be used to compliment one another instead of limiting each other.

Internet as a Metaphor

So far we have discussed the metaphor of the internet and then what it means to be a person online. I think that the metaphor of the internet is very relevant to the latter discussion. Understand how people think about the internet plays into how people think of themselves as a person interacting on the internet.

To me the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis exemplifies this point very well. While I was reading through this I came across some examples in fiction where the idea that language determines thoughts and consequently behaviors. I am not sure if any of you have read 1984, but if you have not you definitely should. Any way in the novel there is a language called Newspeak which was created and implemented using the logic that if people can not express something in words then they will not think about it and will not do it. In this case the words being eliminated are about revolution. So the question is then, is it their language that keeps these people from rebelling or is it something else. Obviously this is only a fictional example, but I think it is one to ponder.