Week 2 - Reflect: Blogging and Channel You

This week I have been asked to reflect on my “online identity”.

I do not really like having an online identity at all. When it comes to Facebook I have less than 100 friends and I’m brutal with my defriending sessions and privacy settings. For university I have had to create Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. While I enjoy using Facebook and now Twitter, I sometimes think that the whole saga of an online persona is overdramatic and excessive. I do not think it is necessary to post on Facebook every single second about every single thought that has ever occurred in your life.

I guess I’m a bit judgemental against people who feel the need to overshare. I overshare with my friends and family in person but they are people I trust and who won’t share my overshare (but recent events have made me very cautious against one person in particular). I don’t feel comfortable when people overshare, generally on Facebook that equals an immediate “unfriend” option.

I was always raised that certain things in life were personal and private and not for general sharing. But my Facebook feed reminds me daily that that’s not the case today. I know who people want to vote for, their various sicknesses or illnesses, their opinions on just about everything… and it annoys me. I felt nervous when I posted about having completed my first semester of my Masters because I didn’t want people to think I was bragging (even though it was definitely brag worthy). I’m scared I’ll become an “oversharer”, it terrifies me.

Kate Davis mentions in her blog that she recently (in 2010) cut back her Facebook profile to no longer include her professional circle. This makes sense to me. I personally don’t think many of my friends really understand what having a professional online identity means and there are high chances that those photos from the weekend will be tagged to my profile (which they were… the annual Food & Wine Festival repercussion).

So unlike what Jason Fitzpatrick (2010) advises; there will be no way that I will be linking all my accounts together. I don’t think it’s professional for my future employers to know what I did over the weekend or my thoughts on politics, my dinner or how much I love my boyfriend. Those things are personal to me and would never go up on Facebook anyway (unless it’s the pig on the spit at Christmas, I will be sharing that to brag to my family!).

Reference List

Fitzpatrick, J. (2010, May 5). Establish and Maintain Your Online Identity [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://lifehacker.com/5531465/establish-and-maintain-your-online-identity

Davis, K. (2010, June 7). The personal-professional divide: moving the line [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://virtuallyalibrarian.com/2010/06/07/the-personal-professional-divide-moving-the-line/