This statement struck me especially because of the anonymity that is assumed by use of computer mediated communication. CMC has provided opportunity for many people that face-to-face interactions would otherwise not. For example conferencing without physical contact would give people a sense of equal opportunity without the prejudicial judgment of color or race or age or gender. It is natural for people to prejudge on a face to face conversation.
People communicating via the internet can easily assume anonymous status giving them a sense of security and confidence. This is particularly witnessed in dating websites where many users assume personas that they are not, thus the heading. Women can be men, men can be women and children can be adults.
So why do people hide under a mask when communicating online? I think maybe the most obvious answer would be social reasons. Because we are brought up a certain way, and both societal and environmental predispositions condition us to think how we think. This gives us our gender roles and when we are not conforming, we get uncomfortable and we lie. Men lie that they are well toned, rich and successful so that they can attract someone and women lie that they are skinny and sexy so that they can attract someone.
Mercy
Very good post, Mercy.
ReplyDeleteI immediately had to think about "Second Life". Why do people pretend to be someone else instead of being the persons they are in real life?
In my eyes, it sometimes has to do with a lack of self confidence. In real life many people suffer from as you called it "social" pressure. Men still are expected to have money and women shall be beautiful. It still is such an old-fashioned thinking although we are in the new media era.
Some things obviously never change and even if most people would not confess this thinking publicly, some of them confess it by using the anonymity of social media and Internet to hide behind masks.
In some cases people do not only hide their personalities, the even look for ways to escape from their "real lives" via Internet.
Second Life - the name of the game says it all - it is pretending to live another life than you really do. And new media, the Internet age, new games enable us to do so...
Eva
Shebley said..
ReplyDeleteMercy..I certainly agree with you as we are not able to determine and identify who are the people that we are communicating/engaging with. In engaging with social networking, everyone needs to be very certain of the reliability of their online contacts, as people are not necessarily telling the truth about their selves online (Rutledge,2008: 84).
If I may add, I would like to share with you my experience in conducting my undergrad project paper on “Online Dating” somewhere in 2002. I’ve created an account with using a female fake ID in targeting at those “silver-tongue charmers”. I did achieved my research objectives and able to identify how internet users are more likely to be influenced by those silver-tongue charmers”. With regards to your statement and my experience in conducting the research, I can be categorised as those people who are not “telling the truth about myself” to the other party. Therefore, it is certainly unethical.
Rutledge, Patrice-Anne. (2008). The Truth About Profiting From Social Networking.
United States of America: FT Press.