Your Computer is Not a Mirror

Your online self is not your true self, it's just a small piece of yourself.  Actually being your true self online in today's world is more dangerous than it would seem at first.  The reading discusses the story of Stacy Snyder, a student teacher who posted pictures of her drinking online.  She was subsequently fired from her job because of those pictures.  Stacy's story serves as a warning to all of us, be careful of what you post online because you do not know who is looking.

However, most people today know that anyone can see what you post online, so there is a continuing trend towards regulating and building an online persona so that instead of your true self, just your online self, your best self is showing.  The study that we read this week says that people with low self esteem often build up their online profiles so that they feel better about themselves which continues to tie in with the idea that only your best self is on display.

I decided to do an experiment to see if I change myself online and build this better version of myself.  Honestly, before I even start to see if I do this, I'm pretty sure that I do.

This is my Twitter profile:

I only interact with my good friends on Twitter, and do you see that lock next to my name?  I keep my Twitter private.  No one can retweet me and I monitor who can see my 140 character rants.

Honestly, I do a fair share of ranting on Twitter.  I feel that I can be more of myself because I can regulate who sees what I post.  I sound much more like myself on Twitter than on any other social media outlets that I have. 

This is how I sound to my friends.  Slightly crazy?  Yes, but the people that follow me on Twitter know that about me already.  They know that I can be overly emotional, goofy and sometimes passionate about weird things like finding the perfect apartment.

However on Facebook with over 400 people that could look at my profile, I portray a different Emily.

Well, maybe not that different, but still, slightly different.  I still appear to be my same, odd self, but there is one huge difference, I show myself to be a kind person here.  The reason for my misfortune that day was because I was doing something kind and it didn't turn out.  The comments all point out how nice I was to try and do something nice for Brandon.  

These two social media outlets show that there is some thought that goes into how I portray myself online.  Facebook is for everyone and so I try to seem like a normal person.  Who knows who will come across my page.  Twitter is for the real me, but is that really safe?  Can I really keep people from seeing those tweets by making my account private?

Sometimes I pull the webcam up on my computer and use it as a mirror, but even then the quality of the picture is not as clear as it would be if I looked in a real mirror.   Social media online is like the webcam, it portrays a poor quality reflection of who you really are.  Your computer is not a mirror, and yet we all think that it can be used that way.