My Digital Self: I Am [Not] Me
We are obsessed with ourselves in this 21st century. We are obsessed with making ourselves digitally omnipresent. We are constantly [re]creating ourselves in digital media to make our less than ideal lives into the ideal. Hillel Schwartz said it best when speaking of the sunset of wax figures: “Along the way, at every turn, has been dissemblance, people so detached from personhood that the best you can manage is a name, not an identity” (105). Schwartz made the case that our obsession with prolonging or extending (as extension) ourselves through various types of “self-portraits” causes our loss of individuality but allows us to live through our copies. In this process of externalization, we validate our interior lives; however, we are less ourselves than the copies we make, simply because our copies are becoming ever-present in ways that we cannot be. This is a problem increasingly common as we continue to utilize and integrate digital technology into our lives, but maybe it is more correct to say that we are increasingly allowing technology to control how and who we are.
The way we proliferate our copies has changed drastically through the centuries, but one thing is obvious: in our current climate, we love the attention and we love acting out the script that we write for ourselves. Our contemporary digital means, especially Facebook and Twitter, enables us to create perfect digital copies of ourselves that are in every way us, but in every way not who we really are. Blog entries. Status updates. Twitter feeds. All these things tell others who we are and what we do, but we don’t even realize that in the process of digitalization, we are editing who and what we are to tell us and others who and what we should be. We create a fiction out of our lives that is more real than who we are. It is pure escapism.
When you actually stop to think about our digital presences, more people interact with our digital facades than they actually interact with our physical selves. I don’t have to be logged into Facebook or my e-mail account for another person to look at me or talk to me; they are looking and talking to my digital copy and that is, more often than not, how they interact with me. We use these avenues to avoid and supplement what our reality actually is. We give in, give up, and get out of the way to better enjoy the fiction that we’re experiencing. We don’t live our lives because we no longer exist in the physical world. We occupy it, but we don’t exist in it. Our memories, our ideas, our wants, and our needs have been digitized to the extent where we no longer need to keep them inside of our heads. In the process of externalizing what makes us who we think we are, we give up our individuality and become a willing member of the digital “cloud.” We think we’re creating what Schwartz equates to as an eternal self-portrait, but that portrait isn’t just a “painting.” It is more ourselves than we allow ourselves to be in the physical domain. The frightening thing is, we do this willingly.
In our quest to eternalize, externalize and make ourselves wanted, we’ve given up being genuine and genuinely being who we are. We have given up any right or claim to the physical world to keep our existence in the minds of millions for the briefest of seconds just so we can validate ourselves and say “I exist, because I have created this digital memento that reminds me that I am me and tells you that I am here.” “We are no longer sure of our selves as originals, no longer sure of what it means to be inspirited” (140).
Works Cited
Hitchcock, Robyn. “I Am Not Me.” Bad Case of History. Yep Roc Records, 2008. CD.
Schwartz, Hillel. “Self-Portraits.” The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. Cambridge: Zone Books/MIT Press, 1998: 89-141. Print.
This essay is © Ian J.F. Wagner.
We are obsessed with ourselves in this 21st century. We are obsessed with making ourselves digitally omnipresent. We are constantly [re]creating ourselves in digital media to make our less than ideal lives into the ideal. Hillel Schwartz said it best when speaking of the sunset of wax figures: “Along the way, at every turn, has been dissemblance, people so detached from personhood that the best you can manage is a name, not an identity” (105). Schwartz made the case that our obsession with prolonging or extending (as extension) ourselves through various types of “self-portraits” causes our loss of individuality but allows us to live through our copies. In this process of externalization, we validate our interior lives; however, we are less ourselves than the copies we make, simply because our copies are becoming ever-present in ways that we cannot be. This is a problem increasingly common as we continue to utilize and integrate digital technology into our lives, but maybe it is more correct to say that we are increasingly allowing technology to control how and who we are.
The way we proliferate our copies has changed drastically through the centuries, but one thing is obvious: in our current climate, we love the attention and we love acting out the script that we write for ourselves. Our contemporary digital means, especially Facebook and Twitter, enables us to create perfect digital copies of ourselves that are in every way us, but in every way not who we really are. Blog entries. Status updates. Twitter feeds. All these things tell others who we are and what we do, but we don’t even realize that in the process of digitalization, we are editing who and what we are to tell us and others who and what we should be. We create a fiction out of our lives that is more real than who we are. It is pure escapism.
When you actually stop to think about our digital presences, more people interact with our digital facades than they actually interact with our physical selves. I don’t have to be logged into Facebook or my e-mail account for another person to look at me or talk to me; they are looking and talking to my digital copy and that is, more often than not, how they interact with me. We use these avenues to avoid and supplement what our reality actually is. We give in, give up, and get out of the way to better enjoy the fiction that we’re experiencing. We don’t live our lives because we no longer exist in the physical world. We occupy it, but we don’t exist in it. Our memories, our ideas, our wants, and our needs have been digitized to the extent where we no longer need to keep them inside of our heads. In the process of externalizing what makes us who we think we are, we give up our individuality and become a willing member of the digital “cloud.” We think we’re creating what Schwartz equates to as an eternal self-portrait, but that portrait isn’t just a “painting.” It is more ourselves than we allow ourselves to be in the physical domain. The frightening thing is, we do this willingly.
In our quest to eternalize, externalize and make ourselves wanted, we’ve given up being genuine and genuinely being who we are. We have given up any right or claim to the physical world to keep our existence in the minds of millions for the briefest of seconds just so we can validate ourselves and say “I exist, because I have created this digital memento that reminds me that I am me and tells you that I am here.” “We are no longer sure of our selves as originals, no longer sure of what it means to be inspirited” (140).
Works Cited
Hitchcock, Robyn. “I Am Not Me.” Bad Case of History. Yep Roc Records, 2008. CD.
Schwartz, Hillel. “Self-Portraits.” The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles. Cambridge: Zone Books/MIT Press, 1998: 89-141. Print.
This essay is © Ian J.F. Wagner.