Online Ontologies
During the last election, I took a self imposed one week hiatus from social media that spanned the final 7 days of the thing, partly because I didn't think I could take the stress of watching an election through the opinionated lens of twitter and partly because the whole enterprise of social media has begun to wear on me. At the heart of this feeling is a growing discontent with the profiles people choose to create for themselves. I feel I can best explain this discontent through my own tagline, which I use across my profiles: "ontologically elusive". The spell check on my browser tells me that “ontologically” isn't a word, but its root “ontology” is defined in information sciences (by wikipedia at least) as a “ formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization”. I figure its close enough to make my point. My point is that the things i say, and who i am in general, cannot easily be lumped into a pre-made category. And no, I don't think I'm that special, I just think I am more aware of it. Nobody can be simply categorized in 140 or so characters, and this is what I resent about social media biographies.
A quick survey across my social media friends reveals all kinds of self imposed ontologies ranging from religious affiliation, sexual orientation, political preference, geography, nationality and family. There is of course, nothing wrong with identifying yourself as any of these things, it often helps to find a community of like minded individuals, but when you choose to represent yourself to the rest of the world (for that is what a social media profile does) through a prefabricated category, you sign on to all of the presuppositions others might carry with it, and worse, you impose those presuppositions on yourself. If for example, you write "Democrat" in your twitter bio, you color everything you say in your actual stream with a liberal bias, regardless of what you are trying to say. Your ability to express yourself becomes limited by your profile. A far better approach is to remain vague in your profile and allow your words to speak for themselves.
But reading through someones twitter stream takes time, and we have become a lazy people. Ontologies, after all, are at their core a system of shortcuts. Rather than explaining every time that a group of people believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, we call them "Christians". What we lose in that categorization, however, is the diversity of beliefs lumped together under that ontology. The categories we create carry are at essence a generalization of a multitude of ideas as plentiful as the number of people lumped together in that category. But its easier. Its easier to deal with people in groups. Its easier to communicate through stereotyping. And our culture looks for nothing like it looks for an easy answer.
So I challenge everyone to take a second look at their profile. What are you saying about yourself when you lump yourself in with a category? For example, a Muslim might think twice about openly identifying themselves as such on social media due to widespread public confusion about what, exactly, a Muslim actually is. I posit that nobody should readily lump themselves into a category because they are placing themselves at the very same mercy of public confusion and laziness (both on the part of others and in a more sinister way, one's self). Don't cheat yourself by trying to find a category that fits you. You are so much more than a column a check marks on a government form. You are a complex and multifaceted individual, let your words and actions speak for themselves, on social media and in real life.
Note: This post was inspired by the N+1 article found here, and also owes a heavy debt to many writers around the web who have pondered similar concepts far more articulately.
