Losing Yourself in Yourself Online - Wysocki

Using online formats of social media to keep up with friends is a fun, easy way to stay in touch, but at what point do online relationships become too synthesized? Worrying about what others will think is a fear shared by people all over the world, online and face-to-face. But what if technological relationships are easier to control and monitor than that of actual concrete conversations and meetings? With so many different ways to express our feelings of animosity and love, do we realize that eventually we start to do and say things from the safety of our screens and QWERTY keypads, not thinking of negative reciprocations? Deciding what is important enough to broadcast to the world from a social media soapbox is directly related to the image of ourselves we fabricate from the things we let others know. Using networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace allow others to see what we want them to see, using them as relationship pawns in our game of self identity. With constant status updates and subjective information posted at a rate decided entirely by the user, social media forums give anyone with the internet or even a good phone the option to set a stage for how others view them as people, friends, coworkers, etc. Even giving the user the option to deny or allow others from viewing their information supplies the user with a sense of power over others. This sense of power can often lead people to further warp the true identity they have thus far created for themselves. Once an identity has been established online, over time, others feedback will continue to shape and form the false sense of character, until the original user themselves may not even be able to differentiate what is real and what is simply a façade so as to fit in. Identifying what is real and what isn’t is at the discretion of the user, mostly going unrecognized by choice. To correctly establish an identity that meets all facets of social validity, one must first understand what requirements society has of them. Lying about a crucial part of who you are means simply lying to yourself, as onlookers wouldn’t be able to differentiate what is real and what isn’t in the hodgepodge manner of internet social media upkeep.

YES!

Mafia II is fantastic. If you have the means, I highly suggest picking it up. Amazon is running free shipping, or the demo is on the Xbox Live Marketplace.