Being public is weird

Seriously weird, who could see you...

Growing up I remember finding Myspace and joining quietly on the family computer, careful not to let my parents find out.

It wasn't because I was in trouble, or because the internet being taken away was a punishment. Myspace fundamentally wasn't understood in my family, by myself included. I saw it as a platform my friends talked about, so social pressure to join was constant FOMO. This wasn't peer pressure, nobody was pushing me to join, I simply wanted to see what people were talking about.

Eventually I setup the page, plaster my favorite 500 songs right there in an auto-play embedded html "widget" and then highlight my favorite friends for my lesser friends to envy.

Seventh grade was a wild time, and everyone who saw my Myspace got constant, class to class updates. Sometimes I'd even change my song to reflect my mood, for extra impact.

The problem here

Wanting others to: admire, envy, lust, or usually at the very least just read our updates prevents authentically curating our own identities!

It's a serious issue, not just a "nerd on the internet" kind of thing. Everyone, from your nephew to your grandma has been on the internet now. Everyone has understood, at least to some extent, what a "digital persona" is. However, almost nobody takes the time to decide ahead of time WHO they're going to be.

The future

I know the me now wants at least a portion of my energy to go into crafting a PURPOSEFUL digital persona. No Facebook resharing memes, no tictap brainrot, no Snapchat lazy pictures. I want every instance of my interaction with the web to be crafted, and reflective of me. The algorithms that seem to have absorbed everyone's attention spans seem to have slipped and let me out.

So if you're here I either threw the link in your face, or you're sleuthing like me.

Either way, just decide who you'll be on the next webpage you visit, because you'll be happy you did.