Vex Appeal is a weblog and collection of projects by Guy Parsons, a game designer, online community and digital strategy dude in London, England. Read more about the saucy butcher boy here.
subscribe to VA by feed or email by clicking the thingy:
projects:
101 things in 1001 days
psychopatch
LOLgod
elsewhere on the internets:
flickr
myspace
zoominfo
linkedin
facebook
guy.lewis.parsons@gmail.com
vexy young things:
jey biddulph
mike jewell
roo reynolds
dan hon
adrian hon
naomi alderman
steve peters
previously on vexappeal:
Everything is miscellaneous Boxr Prinzhorn Dance School Todoist, an awesome to-do list app Murders And Lies: The Victorian ARG? Make and do Photosynth Noise cancelling Queen Mary's Conspiracy lists and 101 things
The taming of shaming
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
So I went along to Chinwag's Dark Side of Social Media on Tuesday, which turned out to be rather thought provoking.
I spoke briefly about my digital experiences. I first started being "public" online when I was 14. We'd consider it an "impressionable age" these days, I suppose, but at that time (the year 2000!) there wasn't a terrible amount of prior art for being young and mouthy online. GeoCities was, I suppose, the nearest thing to having a horribly pimped MySpace, and very few people I knew personally were using Friendster, the standard social network of its day.
So, I set up a blog, because that was really all there was to do. And the most interesting bloggers at that time used their real names, so I thought this was the thing to do too. That's what I did - and what I've done ever since.
(Up until recently, I was a Community Dude for an online game, which meant establishing a close relationship with the player community. A handful of Facebook friend requests later, a sizable number of them know the street I live on, my phone number, and more besides. I only mention it as an illustration of how lax my online privacy is, and also how the corporate transparency I tried to encourage as part of my job ended up influencing the degree of my personal visibility.)
I espouse the view that maintaining an integrated online identity keeps you honest. I like the idea of developing a 'reputation' online, and part of that is acting responsibly and politely. I might have an opinion on something, and there's a risk that other people will disagree and hold it against me, now or, as is increasingly possible, later. I owe it to myself, then, to express these opinions with a modicum of thought and decency. That's a good thing all round - a kind of digital citizenship.
I suppose this is partly a worldview thing - the counterargument from others would be that they're uncomfortable saying anything and associating it with their central identity, or at least they'd prefer not to. I entirely understand that, but I think it's a vaguely unhealthy viewpoint, a bit like 'not going to parties because people might find you annoying.' As I strive to become more active online, I do occasionally come up against these little mental barriers where I feel less-than-entirely comfortable with doing something under a "Guy Parsons brand." But George Foreman sells this lean mean grilling machine, right, and he says: "I'm so proud of it, I put my name on it!" You can switch the cause and effect, though - if you put your name on it, you can learn to be proud of it, or at least take ownership of it.
Luke Weaver later came back to a similar point (although I missed the comment he was responding to!) and saying that maybe, if technology does mean we sacrifice privacy, we might become more compassionate as a result. As our ability to hide the truth wanes, perhaps our ability to handle the truth - our truth, and the truth of others - increases.
One of the interesting facets of digital identity, and particularly social networking, is the element of passive performance. I think most people would be vaguely terrified of standing up in front of a crowd of 100-odd people - even people they already knew - and saying anything, but online that's exactly what you can do.
I'm certainly not going to announce that sort of thing in a weekly all-staff meeting, but most all of my colleagues are on my Facebook friends list. A lot of people emphasise that there are things we ordinarily say and do that don't translate well online: the photos of the casual drug use, the bitchy gossiping, the self-pitying 4am diary entry, etc. I agree, but I also think there's a ton of stuff that we want to do and say that's actually easier and more socially appropriate online than off.
One previous strategy for online conduct is going to meet its demise, I think: security through obscurity. As more and more people get web-savvy, you have to expect everything you do to be exposed by someone with the inclination to do so. I think part of the reason I'm so chilled out about all this is the fact I've been writing and posting under my own name for so long, so I've never bought into the assumption that one can be protected through obscure links and pseudonyms, let alone the hopeful belief that "nobody will bother looking."
Having said that, I believe that "who can be bothered to look" remains a cornerstone of identity management, in a sense. A superficial investigation will present me in nothing but a shiny light, but sufficient digging will reveal all manner of badly recorded songs, poorly-conceived abortive projects and self-involved blog posts emenating from archives of my misspent youth. The fact is, most people can't be arsed to find all that, and the people that can - well, what did they expect to find? It's really not that bad.
PS: Interested in finding more sophisticated ways to describe relationships other than Friends, but without forcing people to use ever more fine-grained definitions instead? My post Cut It Out might be of interest.
PPS: My just-about-former colleagues Adrian & Dan are, funnily enough, included in the "people who influenced me early on to always go by my real name online." The blogosphere was a smaller space back then, innit.
PPPS: You can read other reactions to the event from Eaon Pritchard, James Cherkoff, Alan Patrick, and Beth Granter.
Labels: chinwag, facebook, identity, privacy, social media, social networks, socnets