My Posts Thus Far:
General Conference Digital Reflection My venture into sharing General Conference through social media
The Downward Spiral of Academic Blogging as a College Student The spiral of academic blogging and adding “blogger’ to my identity
The Long Tail...in a Deck of Cards Fan paraphernalia is essentially an extension of an author’s work to continue on something they love
It's a Small World The Internet as one big DIY project and why I love it
My Digital Culture Ashley Hill’s take on Digital Culture and its presence in her life
Lover of Language The word choice Melville uses to describe whaling and philosophy
An Introductory Post About Me Introduction to Ashley Hill
A major theme in my posts is ME. Somehow I consistently insert myself and my experiences into whatever topic I am blogging about. This could be because I am still in phase one of academic blogging, exploring, and the only connection I am making is to that of my own life.
Nevertheless, this is related to “identity,” a subject we discussed in class last month. Our conversation centered mostly around sub-cultures on the internet and guilds like gamers and hackers. As evidenced by my blog posts, I am somewhat isolated in my digital culture presence, but through academic blogging, I have the opportunity to literally create an identity for myself and participate in a vast network of websites and forums.
In developing a web identity, one has infinite possibilities of who and what to become. Before a person can become too invested in a digital avatar, Cheri reminds us that comments provide a reality check, or a true/different perspective to the story being told. As I ponder the question of internet identity, I remember the news frenzy surrounding Manti Te'o's dead girlfriend revealed to be a con artist. How could a Heisman trophy-winning football player be duped like that? The answer is unknown, but a large part is due to the heavy presence people have online. We have the opportunity to invent a better version of ourselves on the internet but still we neglect to filter others through the rose-colored glasses in which they view themselves. I am interested in exploring whether our digital identity is merely a persona or if it should be an accurate representation of ourselves.
Do we need to be honest to our real selves when building our digital selves?
That is a good question. But, I guess when I read it I was thinking about how if there really is a way that you can not be honest to your real selves in creating a digital presence? Even though it is carefully crafted, does the information that we chose to share say just as much as the information that we don't chose to share?
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