“The Internet is another element of the computer
culture that has contributed to thinking about identify as multiplicity. On
it, people are able to build a self by cycling through many selves. An interior
designer nervously admits in my interview with her that she is not at her best
because she is about to have a face to face meeting with a man with whom she
has shared months of virtual intimacy in chat sessions on America Online. She
says she is “pretty sure” that her electronic lover is actually
a man (rather than a woman pretending to be a man) because she does not think
that “he” would have suggested meeting if it were otherwise, but
she worries that neither of them will turn out to be close enough to their very
desirable cyberselves: ‘I didn’t exactly lie to him about anything
specific, but I feel very different online. I am a lot more outgoing, less inhibited.
I would say I feel more like myself. But that’s a contradiction. I feel
more like who I wish I was. I’m just hoping that face to face I can find
a way to spend some time being the online me.’” Sherry Turkle (179)
The concept of Instant Messaging enables us to think about the self in a completely new way. The fact that people are not seen when they are typing grants a freedom that regular socializing does not allow. People are no longer bound by what is actually true—be it their appearance, occupation or even personality. As Turkle stated, we can think about “identity as multiplicity.” People are able to have their ‘real life’ self and their online self or selves. People have the capability to be in one chat room as a 5’10” blonde female flirting and in another as an intellectual discussing T.S. Eliot’s poetry, while sitting in front of the screen as a 5’7” professional male. As the woman suggested to Turkle, people have the ability to be different online, and to explore parts of their personality that they do not show in their real lives, or aspirations of who they want to be in real life. This is the concept of “building a self.” The freedom of creation lies within Internet chatrooms and other communication programs. People can essentially “cut and paste” a personality create a new ‘cyberself,’ that has the potential to be completely different from their ‘real life’ personality. This does bring up the fact that there is “a contradiction.” What is the difference between someone’s online personality and a ‘real life’ personality? Where is the line drawn, or are there new lines being created right now?
“In the MUDs, virtual characters converse with each other, exchange gestures, express emotions, win and lose virtual money, and rise and fall in social status. A virtual character can also die…This is all achieved through writing, and this in a culture that had apparently fallen asleep in the audiovisual arms of television. Yet this new writing is a kind of hybrid: speech momentarily frozen into artifact, but curiously ephemeral artifact, In this new writing, unless it is printed out on paper, a screenful of flickers soon replaces the previous screen.” Sherry Turkle (183)
This is the art and freedom of developing personalities and identities on the
Internet.
It practically becomes another life, especially when a person is involved in
programs like MUD or MOO. So first off this becomes a sort of separate life
where a virtual character ‘experiences’ the same things that a real
person does, but these experiences and lives do not really exist. Is a life
like this meaningful if it is not “real” in the traditional sense?
It appears as though programs like this are redefining the notion of the ‘self.’
People are no longer confined to their social personalities, and no longer bound
by what is or is not physically present. It is truly an art and a freedom that
allows people to think of themselves in multiple ways. For instance, a person
goes to work for eight hours a day with a Type A personality, and is online
for 3 hours a night as Type B. Both are real to the person, and both make up
a large part of their day, so who is to say that one personality is more real
than another? Online personalities and identities have the additional freedom
of destruction as well as creation. When someone gets tired of the part that
he or she is playing online, it can be ended with a click of the mouse. “Life
on the screen,’ as Turkle calls it, can be completely temporary, and reputations
are not lasting. This life certainly has its benefits compared to life in the
skin. However, these benefits and freedoms can have a downside just as much
as ‘real life’ does. Not having a history and the ability to continually
start over can become just as lonely. Whereas it is possible to live in ‘real
life’ without ever stepping into ‘life on the screen,’ it
is impossible to do the reverse. At some point, people have to deal with the
fact that a part of who they have become is not tangible.