Network Identity by Futurista

Did I scare you with the length of this article already?
Nowadays we are so use to bulleted, concise, twitterific 140 character bites of information, anything more is mentally straining. Symptom #2 of the digital era is attention deficit disorder (ADD). A quick glance at this article and your first thoughts are: complexity and time consuming. Nonetheless, I dare you to read the whole thing. I dare you to challenge your disorder.

A Dilemma We Face(book)
For the last several weeks since we kicked off fem-fATL.com a certain worry contained me: I was about to get very personal! Whilst we have our monikers (Futurista, UrbanSocialite, JustB, BonitaApplebum); they aren’t meant to be alter egos but more or less nicknames to personify each of us. One of the premises of our site is a female perspective on everything Atlanta. And that female perspective is not general, it is specific. It is our own personal perspective coming from four educated, diverse, and GOOFY (we keep it real) women. We aren’t trying to hide behind our monikers either. We want you to know who we are, what we like, what’s on our mind and plate. We want to relate, we want to be your girls.

If I could keep Jenny on the block, I’d keep Jenny on the block, but nowadays it is all to hard to segment our social networks and present the self we would like to each of those custom-defined segments. In such a short span of time- circa 2005 to present -there has been a major paradigm shift in the way that we interact with the people in our worlds (online and offline) due to major social network sites like Myspace and Facebook. I’m estimating around 2005 since Myspace was established in 2003 and didn’t become publicly popular until around 2005 when Rupert Murdoch bought the company out. Facebook followed behind a year being established in 2004. I estimate the date around 2005 giving some room for people both time to learn, join, and embrace these new social constructions. I myself didn’t join on the Facebook bandwagon until later in the game, probably in late 2006 or early 2007.

These networks not only made the world a smaller place but also a more intimate one. It allowed people to connect on a greater level, share personal information to a higher degree, communicate on a more readily basis, etc. First impressions are more often made online then off (in my experience). Nowadays, this is the way we meet most people. This is the way most of you have probably met myself.

The dilemma we face on these social networks is the same as the benefit: the world is a smaller more intimate place. It’s been shrunk down to the dreaded high school level where everyone knows about everyone and everyone’s business. And everyone doesn’t just include your classmates- but your professors, your coworkers, your boss, your parents, your ex-boyfriend, the lunch-lady, and a million other lovers and haters.

Everyone Wears the Mask But How Long Will It Last
These networks are a change in society and the way we experience our relationships. It use to be that you separate situations and enter discrete ones with a new mask or a set of social rules that script how you behave. This concept is easily demonstrated by the classic interview scenario: you look your best, you wear your costume, you put on your best act. It’s unlikely you act the same way in front of your close friends as strangers or your lover or people who don’t speak English or your clients or the lunch-lady. But with your online identity (encompassing your portrayal of self on all your social networks combined -whatever they may be) there is only one impression that people are getting and that’s because they likely have access to it all.

Limiting Profiles or Limiting Yourself?
So how should you balance this profile? Do you limit who sees it by blocking friend requests or setting up a limited profile? Do you limit instead your descriptions, your tagged and uploaded pictures, and general activity? Do you just forfeit and delete your account?

Myspace and Facebook understand peoples concerns about this and so have built in features to accommodate it, but do they really help? How do you know who to limit and who not to limit? Some people try to separate their social networks for example keeping LinkedIn for professional relationships and Myspace for personal ones. This is a quick solution for most, but social networks come and go with a short lifespan. The next generation of social networking sites for users will be all about condensing their networks and managing them. People want a one stop shop because they are overwhelmed with different networks, applications, and information. I had to disconnect my Twitter feed updating my Facebook account because there was too much crossover between my networks. Nearly everyone on my Twitter follows me on Facebook and received two status updates every time I tweeted. Trying to segment your social networks like you do in real life, just doesn’t make the most sense online. On Facebook I find it difficult to limit profiles because coworkers may crossover your professional world into your personal one and I may be cutting off possible connections or opportunities by limiting information in their direction.

Collision [Of]Course
Furthermore, it becomes a greater challenge when your personal and professional life merge, clash, and collide online; which is the case for myself. If I had to estimate the percentage of my 24 hour day spent online, I would average 75% and that is because I try to sleep at least six hours each night. But when I’m awake, I’m likely online and I have no complaints. I embrace my virtual life, my computer voodoo trance, my online addiction entirely: Hi, I’m Jenifer aka Futurista and I am a proud technosexual.

The problem is because my whole life seems to take place on the computer instead of in real life, I feel there are no limitations or constraints between my personal, professional, and social life. Perhaps it would be a different situation if I weren’t academically in the field of digital media, or professionally in the interactive industry, or socially on every possible online network including my own ‘let’s be real’ blog. I don’t want to limit my profile because I leverage it in all three arenas. Facebook is one of the largest drivers for traffic to fem-fATL.com and my academic/professional portfolio at jenifervandagriff.com. My networks, especially Twitter, is the way I communicate with my friends be they colleagues from school, coworkers, professors, or complete strangers.

Art and Drawing Lines
So where do you draw the line? Is a line even effective in cyberspace? Can you or should you be yourself online? Now I have many different friends and I can already take a stab at their feelings towards this situation.

For my artist friends- the answer might be obvious: of course be yourself, don’t care what others think. Some of my friends have made a career out of their online persona and so this blending of professional and personal works for them. But most of my artist friends also don’t suit up to go into the office every morning; they are likely self-employed, a true starving artist, or working in the entertainment/nightlife industry where certain behaviors are more accepted then others. Artists online use the medium to further express and expand the reach of their work. You loose artistic points when you conform, when you can’t speak your mind, when you can’t express your ideas freely. Working in a highly artistic arena, my instinct is that my behavior online, whatever it may be, should rest easy to my artistic colleagues.

But what about my likely older, more old school, prospective new boss in the future? What about my academic colleagues? Am I damaging my career by talking about sex so freely/jokingly on  fem-fATL‘s FUCK DOWN REPORT? Will future employers scour my Flickr account and see that I like to party and take issue with it? Am I giving strangers the wrong impression when I use vulgar language in my writing like the all too often used F-word? Will I be judged on my profile as a young 21-year-old in her prime who likes the nightlife and revels in risque topics? Is my successful academic track and hard work professionally going to be overshadowed by a more publicly outgoing me?

Letting Go of the Past and Moving with the Future Flow
My gut instinct is just to go with the flow. I’m progressive and I understand that society is changing. I would unlikely want to work somewhere that did not appreciate my artistic value and personal insight. I know that people fear potential employers finding their pictures of wild college days, but for the employer (atleast in my field) you aren’t hiring bodies, you are hiring minds and personalities; so its silly to expect people won’t have pictures of them having a good time. I hardly have an answer. It’s possible there are ways I could clean up my act and make the future a little less risky for myself, but I find it hard to agree with the self compromising. If I want to say fuck, it would be unlike me to let anyone or anything stop me from saying FUCK! Perhaps I should improve my online etiquette, but its hard for me to treat online like the real world. It is simply not the same thing.

We are establishing right now how these social constructions will pan out and effect our lives. We didn’t have online social networks the way we do now a couple years ago. Maybe then the fear of the employer looking through your Facebook pictures and finding you with a beer in your hand was a problem, but that was because that future employer was also new to the social networking shift. We did not have the same mentality we do now about privacy which has changed due to things like status updates, the photo documentation of life, and the ease of sharing information on everything. People will always be multi-faceted, have many sides, and many masks. Who I am online and how I can express myself online is not the same way as I am in real life. You have to pick and choose which masks you want to decorate your online identity with, but I don’t think you should fear the mix between your professional and personal life. Not only in my field, but I think in the future we will know each other all too well too even worry about the divide. We are establishing right now how these social constructions will pan out and effect our lives and it starts with how you react. If you mold your behavior to fit passiest traditions (like deleting your wild Facebook pictures to please employers or limiting profiles) then you are supporting the divide. If you decide to take a risk like myself and put it all out there, then you are opening the door for change (for better or worse) and opening yourself to wider communication and expression of self.

Dilemmas are never easily resolved and despite the length of this article, I still have my own mixed emotions. As I said earlier, I hardly have an answer and so I leave it up to you fem-fATL lovers and you brave ADD souls to let me know your thoughts and advice. How do you see the future?