Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Blog Post #4: How to make yourself look not look lonely.

The selfie stick has now been taken one step further. Now you can pretend that your photographer is actually the arm of someone who is taking a photo of you while holding your hand.  It is not in shops yet and is only a prototype. Apparently it's "a direct commentary on the growing selfie stick phenomenon, and the constant, gnawing need for narcissistic Internet validation". This instantly reminded me of Erving Goffman’s presentation of self-theory. People portray the version of themselves to please their followers. Individuals try to gather as much information as possible about their friends and followers through social media. The Internet is seen as a huge medium to portray ones identity on a large scale. But the identity we see online is not necessarily a true indication of that person. 

As Erving Goffman says people want to know more about others because they want to know what will be expected of them, and that people act the way they do in order to impress others. I believe that people who use social networking sites do so as a clandestine way of gathering information about people. Those who post know this and so they post in order to please these viewers. Hence, the online identity of a person is usually far from accurate. That does not mean there is no truth in them it just means that it is not entirely true and that it is for you to guage before making any judgment.

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