Are You Who You Say You Are?

Are You Who You Say You Are?

(That’s a lot of “you”)

Katelyn Gilchrist 

When sitting at home, feeding your face, and watching an hour-long compilation of your favourite Viner, it’s fair to assume the last thing you’d be questioning is their authenticity.

On Youtube, there is a cesspool of inspirational youtube videos that end with popular YouTubers saying things like “stay true to yourself”, “be yourself” and basing their success of their authenticity and originality, but how many online stars actually follow their own advice? 

Figure 1: Inspiration (Englert).

In the lecture, Victoria mentioned how in an online network we are not the only ones constructing our identity (Kuttainen, 2017). I believe that in the vine network, with everyone striving for popularity, there are many constraints potentially constructing users online identities. Certain traits such as attractiveness, wealth, humour, and youth draw in views more than others so many users may alter themselves to fit these desired qualities. Once vine began to gain status and popularity as a major network it wasn’t long before many Viners all began making similar content, acting alike and collaborating constantly. The ALS ice bucket challenge is a great example of this. Rather than researching and understanding the purpose of the challenge, many just jumped on board to hopefully gain popularity while the challenge was viral. However, this sheepish display could also be a demonstration of the embedded peer pressures in place for users to act a certain way within this network. Which young users are increasingly susceptible to.

Vine provides its users with the power to portray themselves as whoever they want to be. Shy individuals can express their comedic or outrageous side while the life of the party can have some down time and upload a cooking or art time-lapse. 

A great example of an alternate online persona is Viner Zach King. He rose to the spotlight with his skillfully edited videos of him performing magic. He is well known around the world for his mind-blowing videography and even appeared on the Ellen show and has had his abilities and popularity utilised by many advertisers. However, unlike other popular magicians such as Dynamo and Houdini, Zach’s tricks are purely video editing. The only thing that everyone knows him for, he is unable to do in real life, so does this make his online identity unauthentic? Or is vine just an outlet for him to show talents and express his true identity in ways he may be unable to in reality? 

While many content creators, identities are built around the videos they upload and how they represent themselves through that, users who don’t create content also build their own identity within the app. Despite lacking the autobiographical style profile of a Facebook account that Zuckerberg argues gives accounts their authenticity, I still believe the average vine user would have a generally authentic profile (McNiell, 2012, pp.68). Due to this identity being built around what they revine and like and who they follow. I’d assume it would be quite out of the ordinary for an individual to purposely like, revine and follow certain genres, vines and content creators just in the hopes of building an identity unlike their own. 

All I can say is, I'll be going to bed tonight very confused about which of my internet idols are and aren't "real".

Reference List 

Englert, A. (unknown). Retrieved from https://au.pinterest.com/pin/54184001744473025/

Kuttainen, V. (2017). BA1002: Our Space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 6: Networked Narratives. [Powerpoint Slides] Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
Mascheroni, G. (2015). "Girls are addicted to likes so they post semi-naked selfies": Peer mediation, normativity and the construction of identity online. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychological Research on Cyberspace, 9(1), article 5. http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/CP2015-1-5

McNiell, L. (2012). There Is No "I" in Network: Social networking sites and post-human auto/biography. Biography, 35(1), 65-82. https://doi.org/10.1353/bio.2012.0009