Personas and Word Vomit

There are times in my day when I’m not thinking about anything specific. When I’m just  floating from thought to thought, letting ideas flow and settle.

Today was one of those days.

And a thought that occurred to me had to do with persona, particularly in relation to social media.

There’s a whole blogosphere out there. There’s Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. And a billion others. On all of these, you put up a profile. You share pictures, you update people what you’re doing at various moments throughout the day. You tag friends and specify locations.

Bottledworder, one of my favorite bloggers, has a good take on it here. I particularly love the idea of airbrushing.

Because, really, who are we on these sites? What face are you presenting to the world? Several years ago I taught a course in women’s studies. I asked the girls what they thought they were saying about themselves on their social networking pages when they posted pictures of themselves in bra and knickers or just a great cleavage shot. I asked if they balanced that out with some really smart blog about something they were passionate about.

None of them did. They wanted to be thought of as sexy, not smart.

When I post pics on FB, ninety percent of the time you’ll see what I see: landscapes, signs, family. You won’t see much of me. And when I blog here, I tell you my thoughts, I discuss writing, I talk about issues that occur to me. I discuss plans and options and opportunities.

The last thing I want you, dear reader, to think about when you’re reading me is what color my bra is or whether or not I have cellulite under my tramp stamp tat. Now, perhaps that’s because I don’t have a smokin’ hot body, and posting pics of my half naked body would more than likely make you cover your computer screen in sick. But really, it’s also probably because that’s not what I’m interested in on other people’s sites either. And it’s not my focus in my daily life.

Because that’s not my persona. The face I present to the world, the one I want people to appreciate, is one of intelligence and subtle humor. Am I actually intelligent? Can I actually teach writing? Do I have a sense of humor in real life? Do I actually like to travel, or do I just write about it? How much of the real me do you see beneath the words?

The truth is, you only know as much as the persona presents to you. And I often wonder what people actually perceive me to be, versus what I perceive me to be projecting.

What is your persona? What face do you present to the world? Is it airbrushed? Do you tweak it to make it fit the persona instead of allowing whatever it is to stand on its own?

Book: Ransom by David Malouf

Song: It’s Getting Better All The Time by Brooks and Dunn

One Degree of Separation

Image via Wikipedia

Some random stuff, so bear with me:

I’ve blogged before about degrees of separation, but it’s something that has come home to me again over the last few days:

–One of S’s long ago friends, someone she was close to many years ago but, with time and distance, grew apart from, died from cancer yesterday (She was 46). S was able to follow her final days via Facebook, where the woman’s husband read her friends well wishes to her in her final hours.

–It was S’s mum who called to let S know what had appeared on Facebook.

–I blogged about my bio D recently, and low and behold, he’s on Facebook too. As are the half siblings and aunts and uncles and such.

The point of this: thirty years ago, if you moved to another country, you would most likely have lost touch, completely, with someone unless you made the absolute effort to keep them in your life via handwritten letter. It would be a conscious, deliberate act.

Now, they’re in the ephemeral there: search for someone on the internet, and you can most likely find some way to track them, stalk them, let them simply sit in your cyber-subconscious, etc. People you normally would have cut ties with are easily kept, even just peripherally, in your life.

I haven’t decided if this is a good or bad thing (or just a thing in general). Letting go of old relationships can allow you space to develop new relationships. Being unable to track that crazy ex of yours makes it possible to let go of all that hurt and such. Being unable to track my bio D and see my half siblings…well, I have to think I’d be better off not having found him/them.

But being able to keep in touch with people who brought something to your life, who made you laugh, whom you can still tag once in a while can’t be a bad thing altogether, can it? Although it sucks somewhat when it’s not reciprocal–when the other person has left you to the cyber-subconscious and you’re still attempting a friendship with them.

How many people from my past would I be in touch with if it weren’t for the internet?

None.

Not one.

But, if it weren’t for the internet, I also wouldn’t have ‘met’ some really interesting people and been forced to really analyse my own thoughts and opinions.

I guess that’s what makes unplugging sometimes really good for me. It reminds me of the here and now. The friend I’m meeting for coffee tomorrow, the writing group I’m leading, the panels coming up hard and fast, the world that is bigger than the 17″ screen in front of me.

But there’s no question the internet has provided an amazing sense of community and the ability to learn. About anything and everything you could possibly be curious about.

It’s certainly allowed LGBT fiction to flourish–if you want a book about lesbian space cowboys, you can find it. Thirty years ago it was impossible to find anything other than the Well of Loneliness or Ann Bannon‘s wonderful lesbian pulp fiction.

2 Questions for you: 1. What do you think of the degrees of separation developed because of cyberspace? 2. Do you have a favourite LGBT author?

Song: If you’re gone by Matchbox Twenty

Book: Shadowland by Radclyffe

Social Voyeurism aka Global Nosiness

Image via Wikipedia

Prior to the development of social networking sites like facebook, twitter, myspace, linkedIn, etc etc, we had to choose what to share with a select group of people.

We picked up the phone to talk about that idea that had just occurred to us. We asked friends to go out with us over drinks to discuss professional matters. We told our work colleagues bits about ourselves, and our friends other bits. Although they occasionally overlapped, there was separation.

And privacy.

But with social networking comes the sudden overlap of every aspect of our lives, both personal and professional. We detail the days minutia, ideas appear instantly, are ‘liked’ but not discussed, or, alternatively, discussed until it becomes a chinese whispers situation.

We are voyeurs, peeping through an electric window into other people’s lives, watching people’s smallest actions, smallest thoughts, largest worries, largest successes. We watch their rituals, we watch their relationships, we watch life go by through a screen.

We update, read updates, respond to updates, and update again, all in just a few pithy words. Real communication is reserved for those special times when we meet people in 3d and spend hours laughing over cold cups of coffee or warm glasses of wine. But on-screen we share intimate ideas, deep felt thoughts, our fears and hopes. We tell people without faces what we wouldn’t be able to say in person.

Much like a blog, I suppose, but with snippets instead of paragraphs.

Which isn’t to say anything is bad, or anything is good. It just is.

I watch you. You watch me. They watch all of us. And we participate in the window watching, both as exhibitionists and voyeurs.

Book: n/a

Song: The Fear by Lily Allen