Facebook, Identity,Heavy Metal and a bit of me
I view the internet as a sea of faces, a place that is full of information and people and a place where people can reflect parts of their personality or take on a persona and act completely different the power is in the player if you will.
For myself personally on the interment I choose to reflect or exaggerate parts of myself mainly through Facebook. Facebook is not the only media I have used on the internet to express parts of my personality. I also have skeletons in the closet or in a more relative sense videos of my heavy metal band I was a in as a sixteen-year-old. One of these statements is 100% accurate and to just calm your nerves and as basic as it potentially sounds the latter is true. As a sixteen-year-old boy I was the front man of a Christian influenced metal band known as faith aligned.
As most people start finding themselves or creating their identity on the internet there are often risks associated with our potential behaviour as you can imagine as teenagers we take risks with how we express and present ourselves on the internet almost like a friend giving you information about another person before you met them. As Livingston (2008) conveys teenagers on social media like to express who they are and pieces of their identity. In relation to me my expression would be heavy metal music if you haven’t meet me in real life and see my profile and that I like heavy metal music you may not feel as a person we would connect, as we have different interest or expression of self. On the other spectrum you may like heavy music and feel inclined or interested to see what content or views I have on the topic.
As you can imagine like a lot of people and their identities on the internet there are some potential pieces of our identity we which to keep concealed. This is identified by Dijck (2013) who conveys the complexities of social media and how the users are faced with hiding pieces of our personality. Dicjk’s (2013) article explored the complexities of a social media user and the different shades of our personality in which we show as the article explored through our LinkedIn and Facebook accounts.
For me personally I don’t have a linked in account so I feel it’s not an issue even though that may change soon I feel I am content with the media and views I express on Facebook and not concerned about employers having a look though my time line.
For my band to land our first gig we had to spam and share our music on Facebook to enter a link in which people can vote for our music. I guess you could say we were fanning (Hyllegard, Ogle, Yan,& Reitz, 2011) to a certain extent but as you can see in the photo below.
We won the competition.
From my personal account I am not worried or concerned about hiding pieces of my personality from the internet as I have not committed any crimes or acted in any way in genuine or in a anti-social behaviour, but I could see why people may not want their employers or future employers entering their social media sites.
I feel Facebook conveys it nicely by calling your wall a timeline as this is exactly how it acts. Regarding my Facebook wall timeline, it is filled with photos and videos of moments in my life as well as some expression of self or concerns I had at the time. I feel as an individual we should be able to express ourselves on the internet and not be criticised. If we apply the adage think before you speak.
Sources
Figure 1-https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151142719193820&set=t.1813436642&type=3&theater
Figure 2- https://www.facebook.com/HeavyDaysOffical/photos/t.1813436642/404644512924748/?type=3&theater
Resources
Dijck, J. (2013).’You have one identity’: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35(2), 199–215.doi:10.1177/0163443712468605
Livingstone, S. (2008).’Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers’ use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression. New media & society, 10(3), 393–411.doi:10.1177/1461444808089415
Hyllegard, K, Ogle, J, Yan, RN & Reitz, A. (2011).’An Exploratory Study of College Students’ Fanning Behaviour on Facebook. College Student Journal, 45(3), 601–616.
