Digitized Lives: Part 1

I was delightfully surprised to learn that T.V. Reed is a professor at WSU. It's nice to be able to read books written by those at my university. I found Reed's thoughts in Chapter 3 to be the most interesting, this idea that people are able to transform into someone else entirely on the internet. This opens the door for manipulation, deceit, theft. With all of these apps, Photoshopping abilities, and computer hacking, it is no problem for even the least tech savvy individual to create a false identity online. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not only the digital liars and manipulators that fake their identities online. I do it too, albeit, in less intentional ways.

LinkedIn, for example, is where I put on my best face. All of my job experiences, my education, my certificates, all of my talents and abilities are put here. To anyone who doesn't know me outside of this page, I am a talented DTC major, graduating in December 2015, with a variety of job experiences, ready to join a workforce. I look smart, focused, hardworking, pleasant, and like a fantastic future employee. None of my flaws, faults, or failures appear on this page. Facebook is where I put the most interesting me: every cool place I go to, all the cool friends I have, all the most exciting photos of myself, they all go here. Everyone puts different versions of themselves in different places on the web.

We hear tons of stories about someone who met another person on a dating website, but when they set up a non-digital meeting, they found out that this other person was actually nothing like who they said they were online. There are even reality television shows about introducing two people who lied to each other online. People play games like The Sims to create a new identity for themselves, to live the life they've always wanted or to just try out living a different way for fun. We love creating false identities, while we also struggle to keep our real identities. Identity theft is a huge problem in our country, particularly with the digitization of so much of our lives. Someone gets ahold of your credit card number, or your social security number, and they can ruin your credit score, your reputation, your whole life.

So much depends on our identity, and yet we are so eager to make up a false one.