Yesterday’s class brought up so many interesting questions, and one that was particularly of note to me was whether or not we can draw a line between and online and off-line at this point–which points further to the question of whether or not the internet even exists. When I think back on the Miller article about SNS, something that I extracted from that paper was the ability for an individual to expose different parts of their personality through the use of different SNS. The spheres of who they post to can determine what they expose of themselves, or how they choose to present themselves. For example, on my snapchat (which I used to have, but no longer do), which consisted of school/college-aged friends, I used to post content related to my everyday social life, such as friends I was catching up with, parties I was attending etc. Looking back now, I definitely catered my content to who my snapchat “friends” were. Would I have ever posted anything remotely serious? probably not. On facebook, however, I am friends with both peers and older adults, so my content has been less about my social life (though I had posted pictures of my friends), but more about my career-related advertisements such as shows that were coming up, recording sessions that I was doing, or even a place to announce big life achievements, such as my admission to Princeton, for example. In both platforms, facebook and snapchat, I am presenting different sides of my self. Is one representation on an SNS more authentic to who I am than the other? Do either encompass my entire sense of “person” or “individual”? Definitely not. Each representation of myself on these sites is a small piece in the greater puzzle of who I am.

Then this makes me think, is real life any different? Am I ever in a situation where the person I am interacting with in real life can fully understand the entirety of who I am? Or, just in SNS, am I only showing pieces of myself? When I am interacting with my parents, they see the whole lot of who I am, yet, they don’t exactly see the version of myself that I am with my friends–which, as one might expect, is much different. I would say that neither of those interactions, with my parents or friends, is more or less authentic to myself–they are just different sides of me.

In both of these examples, in the digital realm, and in person, I am presenting different parts of myself depending on who my audience. I wouldn’t say I really did this consciously, but I think it certainly says something about how audience affects how we exist in whatever atmosphere. I think that my points also further support the notion that that the internet and real-life are actually much more similar than one might think, and that the line between begins to blur. These observations also make me wonder, is it ever really possible, on the “internet” or in “real-life”, to present the entirety of your true self and personhood? Or are we always only showing pieces of ourselves? Possibly it’s not about who you’re interacting with, but how long you’ve been interacting with them. So does that mean that only when I have been on Facebook for 40 years, that my “friends” will be able to gain a better sense of who I am in my entirety? And possibly, can I say that only until I grow old with my significant other will they truly see each side of me that makes up the whole of who I am? I don’t have the answer to any of these questions, obviously, but they have certainly made my head spin quite a bit.