Online Identities

How Do You Define Your Online Identity?

One of the most significant observations of the impact of online identities is the way that some people can feel that they have achieved their ‘true’ identity for first time online. For example, some people may socialize more successfully and express themselves more freely online. This is one of the ways in which online identities can transform offline identities.

Whether a person is included or excluded from a group is important in forming their identity. People’s identities are partly created by group membership, but also they may choose to adopt an identity which is different from the way in which others stereotype them.

The fluid concept of identity has been part of the web from the early days, even though it's increasingly at odds with the internet economy. The ability to use an inconsistent and even contradictory set of personas makes the internet so attractive to many people. As the old joke goes, on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog.

From a commercial point of view, this fragmented identity is an irritant: companies would much rather be able to tie a persona to a person – to turn an online identity into a verifiable human being. That's because much of the web economy is based on businesses gathering up the scraps of data that we shed as we roam the internet – information about where we've been, what we've read or which products we've browsed and bought.

All this material is collated, analyzed and sold on as a package of information to companies that can use it to target advertising at us.

Most of us present an idealized "me", fabricated specifically for our various, compartmentalized and implied audiences. Often that means putting our best foot forward in each of the media we use: we preen and pout for profile pics, we voice attitudes and opinions that we think will make us appeal to the people whom we most want to like us and we post and tweet information that we find interesting and which won't make us look rubbish.