Who Are You People Anyway?

Today, our online world is very much a reflection of the "real" world – we have good friends, acquaintances, colleagues, mentors, peers, family, and others, all of whom join us online in some way, shape, or form. And for those that live in big cities, especially tech meccas like San Francisco, Seattle, or New York, those virtual friendships often intersect with the real world, becoming just an extension of what already exists in real life. However, for many other people, the online world is a place where they go to make friends – friends who hail from all over the globe, friends who will never meet in real life, and friends who, for all the camaraderie and shared interests, don’t really know each other.

The honest truth is that for many people, their online persona is only a fraction of their whole self. For various reasons, many people choose to draw the line between what is publicly shared and what is private. This concern for privacy is even more prominent in older generations, who remember the infamous case of Heather Armstrong, the woman who was fired for blogging about her job online. Along with her, there were many others who had to learn this lesson the hard way.

Even years after the "dooce" incident, sites like EFF were still recommending that the "best way to blog and still preserve some privacy is to do it anonymously," and provided tips on how to do so. This led to a rash of anonymous bloggers, who shared personal details of their lives, work, and relationships online, making friends with other anonymous bloggers who did the same. You still see this trend quite a bit in the mommy-blogger circle, where the writers went by pseudonyms like "Mrs. Tiramisu."

But then, as Web 2.0 took root, more people began joining social communities where the value of making friends and sharing your interests in a more open fashion was an integral part of the interactions that took place there. Web 2.0 was all about personalization – adding your unique voice to the community as a whole, where everyone benefited from these individual actions. It became harder to hide your individuality when services like online bookmarking exposed what you thought was interesting, networks like MySpace and Facebook let you share your personal interests and hobbies, and sites like flickr let upload your personal photos. People began connecting, and those connections felt almost if not equally genuine as connections that were had in the "real" world.

And yet, even today, as Web 2.0 morphs into "social media," the fact remains that people are still withholding information about their "true" selves. For some, this is done because of the need to present a professional image online. For others, it’s just a matter of just not being comfortable with revealing the most personal details of their lives for the world to see and for Google to index. Michael Martine of Remarkablogger dove into this subject recently, in an excellent post on the subject of what social media can reveal about you. It began:

Sorry, but I didn’t Stumble your post, even though you asked nicely and you’re my friend. Why didn’t I? After all, it was a great post about overcoming addiction. Sorry, but I didn’t Digg your post, even though normally I would do so. But I didn’t touch your Digg submission, which was a news article about the upcoming 2008 presidential election. Your Reddit submission on a religious topic? Nope. Your del.icio.us bookmark of revealing photographs of a beautiful celebrity? Nope…..With each tweet that I write, each @reply I send, I could be adding brush strokes to a picture I never intended to paint. It could be an unflattering self-portrait or it could be a joyful, exciting slice-of-life image of a real human being others want to get to know.

In other words, we’re carefully choosing the aspects of our personality that we broadcast to the world. A poll on FriendFeed confirmed this to be true. Some people agreed that personal life, politics, and religion were not subjects they brought up online. What’s interesting about these responses from the tech community is the fact that another online community – the political bloggers and blog readers – would have no problem revealing their political opinions online. Politics is the aspect of their life that they’ve chosen to share.

Of course, there were some who felt that they were "pretty much themselves" online and online friends knew them just as well as anyone else, but they seemed to be the minority. There was also the question of differentiating between who is just an online acquaintance vs an actual friend. That’s a good point, but I would argue that even my closest online friends don’t know me as well as my offline friends do. No matter how many different ways there are to communicate via the internet, there isn’t anything that compares to face-to-face interaction.

So, what can we do to be "more real" online? The conclusion of the Remarkablogger post had a few ideas including using separate accounts for public and private selves and/or using privacy settings in the services we use. Maintaining multiple accounts is a hassle, but privacy settings – if done well, like in flickr, for example – don’t have to be. However, it was their last suggestion that’s really inspiring: "Just Don’t Care."

While that may be easier said than done (especially for those who like their jobs) this is a trend you’re going to see more and more of in the future. Gen Y and the other digital natives don’t care. They grew up over-sharing and, quite frankly, they just don’t see what the big deal is. So what if you had an embarrassing picture posted online? We’ve all been there, they would tell you. They would think you were crazy if you were worried about putting a political badge on your web site or posting a curse word in your blog post. The rest of us, however, got a little anxious just thinking about doing so. 

Are we wrong for holding back? Outside of business owners who need to present a professional image, what is really stopping us from saying this is who I am?