Boyd’s article “Why Youth ♥Social Network Sites” brings up a good point when saying that who we are online is not really who we are in real life. Specifically Boyd means that our online personas are much more carefully constructed, exaggerated, and sometimes even fabricated.

While we have pretty much moved on from Myspace to Facebook I can still recall the days of Myspace. Back then the “Myspace picture” was pretty much the quintessential example of how one’s online persona is a false representation of the real thing. It was a widely recognized concept that one’s Myspace picture was not a clear representation of how you really looked. With Myspace you controlled all of the images that appeared on your site and people saw you how you wanted them to see you. This is great in terms of the online community but I think that it is easy to get caught up in the exaggeration. Sometimes people forget that while we have a life online, we live in reality and at the end of the day you still look the way you do and act the way you act.

I think that Facebook is a progressive step towards getting closer to the truth. Friends are able to tag unflattering pictures of you, and follow your comments on the news feed to get a better understanding of who you really are. I guess I understand the appeal of having complete control over your image and persona, but we should also be aware of how easy it is to create an entirely different identity altogether.