E-Personality: Not the Authentic You, Or Is It?

Now I turn to Elias Aboujaoude's Virtually You in which he pontificates in a mostly critical fashion on online technology and digital media's impacts on the offline self. All the traits that some like Attrill in the last post would call empowering for some people -- freedom of expresssion, potential anonymity, a sense of security -- subsequently are enfeebling, corrupting, and perverting for others -- anonymity, invisibility, loss of boundaries (e.g., nonverbal cues and those between individuals), and absence of any real hierarchy (Aboujaoude, p. 40). These latter traits of online communication and social engagement add up to what Aboujaoude calls disinhibition.

One would imagine that disinhibition would be a good thing under Goffman's paradigm of self-disclosure (SD), i.e., disclosure or identity-building as dramatic/individual performance. The loss of the anxiety and fear of socializing face-to-face, that is, the elimination of performance anxiety, would be a good thing, right? It's not when in the hands of Aboujaoude. Rather, taken to the extreme, it can go terribly wrong very quickly. Technology and digital media do not change just the performance or act of SD, they change the performer ... for the worse.

If we look at the first chaper of Virtually You, "E-Personality," we see that Aboujaoude argues that a transformation of one's self or identity occurs when a person falls prey to the attractions and distractions of online media. In fact, he asserts that one's personality is "hijacked," that a kind of "identity theft" takes place when s/he submits too deeply and freely to the mystique of online and digital platforms (p. 16). Extreme multitaskers lose the ability to sustain lenghty, linear trains of thought and revert to communicating with curt sentences (that is, assuming they haven't regressed to dropping proper grammar and punctuation) and abbreviated speech (excessive use of cryptic short-hand and acronyms). Media and online gaming junkies lose themselves to Internet or media addiction. In short, the "sense of potency" and "initial happiness" that attend online behavior can just as easily backfire and ruin one's self in the offline world (p. 23). Online empowerment, he argues, often turns into offline disaster: less diplomacy in offline interactions, less social tact, and a proclivity for distractions (Ibid). Online, many act as and become new, different identities, which manifest as new, typically unsavory personalities offline (p. 27).

It becomes abundantly clear that Rushkoff and to some degree Turkle (in her later book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other) would support Aboujaoude's claims. Aboujaoude asserts that the e-personality that emerges from online activities and behaviors is one that competes with the offline, that they are often in opposition to each other (p. 32). Attrill in her "Self Disclosure" article (again, see the previous post) would state that online, the actor engages in impression management (Goffman), that is, will adjust his/her online appearance to seem more attractive, smarter, or better than s/he is offline; at the very least, one selectively discloses self-information by divulging only positive traits in order to obtain the obtain the best outcome. Aboujaoude would characterize this performance as "well-meaning dishonesty" that, extended far enough, results in a parallel identities: the less desirable, less courageous, more anxious offline identity; and the bolder, sexier, stronger, and brighter online personality (p. 29). What arises is a schism that leads to dual or even multiple personalities or identities.

I don't wish to overemphasize the negative consequences of online self-disclosure/identity-building/Goffmanian dramatic social performance, but Aboudjaoude's assertions of parallel identities and schisms in personalities screams fractal identities to me. Apply online and digital media (technology) to the act of self-disclosure, and it is hard to see argue that not just the behavior of the actor changes, the actor him-/herself does. The newly liberated form of performance that occurs in online environments reflects back on the actor-individual, changing the essence(?) or personality of that individual. And while Attrill claims that online media changes self-disclosure quantitatively (i.e., it can happen faster, amongst more people/audience members, in a shorter period of time), I would argue that by Aboujaoude's interpretation, self-disclosure is changed qualitatively, not only online but offline as well. Is it the fractal identity effect of digital media and technology?