Nicola Owen

Online identity

Often in everyday life we are faced with having to hide our real self just so we will not experience rejection or embarrassment. We have the control to decide which self we display in which social settings; there is a solution to this, personal homepages. These allow a person to be who ever they want without the fear of any personal attack. There is less decimation online than in the real world, people are free to say what they want without fear of not being accepting. Things on a personal homepage for example can be easily changed, like the colours or what we say about our selves, and sometimes we can make up a whole new person or change our gender. These sites give a person the chance to be who they want even if its not the real them.

Many services provides offer free web space such as yahoo or geocities, who claim to have over 4.5 million active homepage builders each. These companies offer templates as well for your sites making it even easier to have your own webpage.

Often people use these sites as a simple diary to tell the world what they have done that day, or write down there feelings, people often do this to make things clearer in there heads. These homepages act as the person’s connection to a world where their self-doubts are easily hidden or overcome in certain situations online. The main example of this is a homosexual person who feels they can’t reveal there sexuality to someone face to face, the internet gives them the oppurity to relieve this information in a less harsh environment on the web. Often getting this information out in the open on the web will help the person reveal it to people face to face as well. The Internet offers the user the opportunity to relieve facts with of the fear of social discrimination. It also gives the user the oppurtity to chat to others people on the web who are in similar situation or people who can help you. The Internet brings together people from different cultures and background who all chat freely together on the net, but they would not dream of talking to these people if they met on the street. Would we class this as an ideal world, a world without discrimination, a world were people live in peace? Or is this just fantasy world?

Although having a homepage is often seen as a good thing. Is it really? People seem to be living out a fantasy life on the web. Are they simply showing complete strangers the real them and hiding behind a more socially accepted personality in real life?

Are they fakers? Surely this is wrong when complete strangers may know the real them better than their blood relatives or their friends? The question is does the Internet help these people be more socially accepted or does it simply encourage them to live a lie.

Another way people create an online identity is by creating fan sites these are similar to homepages but the person has dedicated their site to their favourite programme, film or film star or even hero.
Fans are stereotyped as obsessive losers living in a fantasy world populated with characters from their favourite programmes. Maybe this is a bit harsh should we really stereotyped all of fans as losers, could they just be people who want to share their views with other people who enjoy the same things. Science friction programme are often set in the future, give the viewer a chance to in put there own idea, because there is a strong element of fantasy, they relate these to real-life issues. It seems to me that often people have theses website because in normal life they are not accepted for whatever reason maybe they are gay or they different than the normal in some way. But again is this just a stereotype or is it true?

I don’t use chartrooms so I don’t really know what goes in them, but from what I have heard they are ordinary people who chat to each other often they have never meant. This is properly why I don’t use they I idea of chatting to a complete stranger does not really appeal to me, but I understand that some people like to chat to people from all over the world.

Again on sites like this people change the names and don’t always relieve who they really are, they also sometimes change everything about them, inventing a whole new person.

I have never really thought about my online identity, but I do use the Internet a lot. I find it quite scary that when I go on the Amazon website it always says welcome Nicola even when I haven’t logged in. It was then that I realised that when you visit sites they remember data about you and what you looked at. This is what makes up part of my online identity, it kind of scary when you think that it might be really easy for someone to access information about you. Information is gathered about everyone that uses the internet, so if that it true then we all have an online identity, data facts about us and what we like. Can you access this information? If it is information about you then should you be able to view it? Who can view it? Is it right that facts and credit card details are stored about us on the web, most people don’t even realise that they even have an online identity or data built up about them.


Another reason why that I have an online identity is by MSN messenger and hotmail I use this to keep in touch with my friends who are all over England at different universities. Having free email accounts, which can be accessed, easily on the net makes it easy for anyone to have one. Having your own email means the user can have any name they want not necersily there name. I am bit boring and mines just my name but a lot of people have weird emails, often there favourite football team of some sort of nickname. But on msn messenger you can change sign in name to something other than your name. Most people have completely random names, which mean nothing to anyone. Mine is completely random it is a line from a song but people always ask me why I have that as my sign in name because they no it is out of character, because your friends know you who you are and what you are like. But in chat rooms it is easier to use any name you want because no one knows the real you. Is having a sign-in name another way to hide the real me from people or is it a bit of fun? I would personally say that it is a bit of fun but maybe for certain people they use it to so a different side to their personally or a different them. As I chat to my friends on the Internet I would not say I have a different identity online but in a chat room I might chat to someone different because I didn’t no them and would be reserved.

So we can see that online identities are created in loads of different ways often without the user even knowing about it. So what ever you use the web for you are constantly building up an online identity.

posted by monkeynic @ 7:37 pm