“I’m So Much Cooler Online”

This is a song title from the new Brad Paisley CD. The song lyrics are all about the different personalities that one can acquire through online chatting and profiles. The lyrics are both funny but scary at the same time. http://www.elyricsworld.com/look/b/Brad-Paisley-lyrics/Online-lyrics.html

These lyrics remind me of the days when I was younger and just starting out with the whole instant messaging thing. When my family first got a computer, My mom would talk online to my family in Germany and my aunts and uncles. She started by using AOL instant messaging, which I also wanted. My first screen name was emmylousallysue. That is a name that my dad and uncle call sometimes and I needed a screen name that no one else would have. I talked to the kids that were from school and occasionally when outsiders to me would IM me, I would respond if my mother wasn’t looking because she was totally against it. One of the things that I remember most was the beginnings of the short hand words like lol for laughing out loud. I also remember when random people would IM me they would say, a/s/l which meant age, sex, location. I always said the truth about my age and sex but I remember my location changing all the time. Sometimes I was from California, others I was from New York and sometimes I was from another country. I don’t know why I did that, I guess it was because I didn’t want to give out all my information but I felt that if changed my location, I would be able to be myself and yet feel the securities of knowing that me as a person from that state didn’t even actually exist.

After AOL IM, it became a craze in my middle school to have MSN messaging. It was the hotmail account messaging and everyone had it at school. There were ninety three kids in my middle school class and I probably had 75 people on my list of friends that spanned not only my grade but the other kids in higher and lower grades that I knew. This was the first place where I discovered emoticaons, which began to make regular appearances in all of my messages to people. I do not think that I had anyone on my friends list that was not from Dillon where I am from. Everyone I talked to on there was less than two miles away talking right back. I do not feel like my identity changed at all through MSN messaging because everyone who was on my friends list knew me.

When I got to college, I realized that everyone here has AOL instant messaging so again I took on that role. This time, I changed my screen name, emmamt5, and only have friends on that list that are students at Saint Mary’s and Notre Dame. I only get on when I am bored or need something from someone who frequents their computer. They all know me as well so there is no need for me to lie about where I am from or who I am.

I also have facebook and myspace. I have facebook because everyone has it and it is a way to talk and learn about other people at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s as well as entertain me when I look through everyone’s pictures and comments. I have Myspace because my mom and my sisters do not have facebook and I want to be able to communicate to them through some sort of technology other than the cell phone. I have a few friends on myspace and am very apprehensive about adding people I do not know who request to be my friend.

I think that the reading Culture and Identity is a great reading and a reassuring article about the need for self protection when it comes to information on the internet and instant messaging. Dateline has been doing installments of their investigation into child predators through the internet. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11152602/ This address is a link to the site that talks about the work that dateline has been doing to catch these sick freaks.

I think that this is a definite problem that people face while chatting on the internet and everyone should be fully aware of the risks. Anyone can say anything about their location, their age, and their attributes because there is no way of knowing for sure the actual truth. It is so easy to make up things about yourself online and no one ever has to know that you are lying. People find it easier to confront each other through messaging, and predators are able to seduce and corrupt youth into believing they are someone they aren’t or that they are who they are and their motives for chatting are not what they actually are.

I think this article does a lot for the sense of real identity being corrupted by the possibilities that lie within the wave lengths of the internet and the ability one has to completely change themselves and every quality true to the self. That is both intriguing and scary at the same time.

Emma