Olivia Toh (10427597)

“Masquerades in Cyberspace”

This project sought to examine how the Internet offers a space for individuals to (re)create themselves.

When I began this project, I envisioned looking at how the Internet allows individuals to experiment with concepts of identity. As a space where bodily signifiers are absent, the Internet provides an interesting arena - simultaneously public and private - where individuals need to make themselves exist by creating a digital body and online identity.

This blog began with the focus on how people can adopt and manipulate different identities when they enter cyberspace, but my focus in my final post is on how the identities we create therein can affect our futures outside the space of the Internet.

When I was researching this topic for this project, I came across the term 'digital tattoo' on a random blog. I think it’s a really great way of describing the identity or identities we leave on the Internet, every time we create a profile or digital body to represent ourselves. The ‘tattoo’ is imprinted on the cyberscape and is pretty much impossible to remove, which leads us to question how the online identities we create at one stage of our lives can affect us in the future.

As I mentioned in my last post, the Internet offers us a liberating space in which we can create and play with new identities, or become more comfortable with our own under the blanket of anonymity. However,the opportunity it affords users is indifferent to moral concerns.This is problematic when we consider that the very freedom that allows Stewart to live out a dream life as Achilles can also allow a con artist to become a doctor. The latter, which occurred in an online community, proved to be traumatic for those counselled by the "doctor" when they discovered the truth, as they had confided in him and established a bond. This is a simple example to highlight the subversive potential of (bodily) sign-less cyberspace, as a place in which individuals can intentionally set out to mislead others or partake in anti-social behaviour.

Hello all,

technically this should come after my video.. but as that's still under some construction, I thought I would just post this up first.

Cheers,
Olivia
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As it turns out, next week’s seminar readings includes one by Cumberland that is all about how the anonymity of cyberspace makes it an ideal space for women interested in erotic fan fiction to express their sexual selves safely and comfortably. Although female authors are able to write erotica professionally in the ‘real’ world, there are still social mores which prevent many from doing so. By participating in fan fiction websites and writing under pseudonyms, ‘women can go directly to their readers without risking their identities with editors, publishers, or … anti-erotica fans’ (Cumberland, 2000). While this article focuses specifically on fan culture and erotica, it highlights how the anonymous nature of computer-mediated communication allows people a greater freedom of expression without prejudice.

Introduction to identity online

“On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

If you recognise this quote, it is likely that you saw it accompanying a cartoon in which a dog sits at a computer, talking to another dog. The cartoon, by Peter Steiner, was originally published in the New Yorker, but has widely circulated the Internet since. The cartoon and its quote sums up quite nicely the premise of my videoblog: that there is an anonymity on the Internet that allows us to play with the concept of identity. Unlike in the ‘real’ world, where our physical presence announces our existence to people around us, we do not exist online until we ‘write ourselves into being’ (Sunden 2003, quoted in boyd).

Olivia Toh 10427597

Synopsis:

This project will explore the concept of identity and the way in which the Internet allows for its manipulation.

Description:

The non-existence of the physical body in cyberspace allows users the possibility to create a new identity for themselves. This is particularly evident in online gaming communities, but also to a lesser extent in social networking sites such as myspace. This project is interested in the abstract notion of the absence of the body, and what it entails for the concept of identity, which is often thought of as something constant and permanent.