Underestimating yourself vol 1

• Self-presentation


  The process of controlling how one is perceived by other people
• Anything that is posted online is considered public no matter what your privacy settings are
• Personal Identity


  The interpersonal level of self that differentiates the individual as unique from others
• Social Identity


  The level of self whereby the individual is identified by his or her group memberships
• Dematerialization


  Today our information, communications, photos, videos, music, calculations, messages, "written" words, and data are now largely invisible and immaterial until we choose to call them forth
• Dematerialization


  • They are composed of electronic streams of ones and zeroes that may be stored logically or in some hard to imagine cloud
  • Raises the question of whether consumers can become as attached to immaterial possessions as they can to material possessions and whether we can gain status and an enhanced sense of self from virtual possessions
• There was uncertainty about the control and ownership of many of these digital goods, leading to making backup copies, making hard copies, and yet regarding them as less "authentic"
• The lesser physical appearance of music without discs, dust covers, or jewel cases make it less a part of the extended self
• It's much easier to delete an ecard than to discard a physical greeting card
• Digital virtual possessions appear to lack some of the characteristics that invite attachment to material possessions. For example, they are intangible, held only within software parameters, are apparently easily reproduced, and may not gather the patina of well-loved material possessions
• In 1988, Russell Belk presented the concept of the extended self
• Extended self


  Knowingly or unknowingly, intentionally, or unintentionally, we regard possessions as parts of ourselves
• Digital modifications of the extended self

  • Dematerialization
  • Re-embodiment
  • Sharing
  • Construction of self
  • Distributed memory
• Re-embodiment


  Not only have our possessions lost the constraints of their former physical bodies, so have we. We would be emancipated from our bodies and take on whatever persona we wished
• Re-embodiment in an avatar is characterized by a progressive process. Together with designing our avatar, giving it a name, learning to operate it, and becoming comfortable with it, we gradually not only become re-embodied but increasingly identify as our avatar
• In MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), it is often said that during the game, the player is the avatar: "A persona is a player, in a virtual world. Any separate distinction of character is gone. The player is the character. You're not role-playing a being, you are that being; you're not assuming an identity, you are that identity; you're not projecting a self, you are that self"
• Attachment to avatars


  • Whether players see their characters as pure extensions of themselves, as their children, as their bodies, or as reifications of their own ideals, MMORPG characters act as a powerful draw for many people and may actually hold them in the virtual world for years at a time
• Proteus Effect


  The tendency for people to be affected by their digital representations, such as avatars, dating site profiles and social networking personas. Typically, people's behavior shifts in accordance with their digital representatives
• Together with blogs, selfies, web pages, this has arguably led to greater self-reflection as well as more digital bits of the extended self to represent us
• We often share on social media to express our "true self." This desire often stems from our need for a "sense of belonging"
• When other people "like" or "share" our updates, we often get a temporary high from it in our brains
• When we overshare on social media, we become "approval-seeking machines." Every thought, feeling, and opinion needs to be broadcasted to the public, and we no longer have a sense of what should be kept private
• Many teenagers, as well as some adults, share something even more intimate with their partners; their passwords. This may be the ultimate act of intimacy and trust or the ultimate expression of paranoia and distrust to our partner
• Confessing our secret truth feels freeing, even as it binds us in guilt-motivated behavior
• Contemplation, self-examination, learning, reading, are a part of the "technologies of the self" through which we seek to purge and clean ourselves
• The religious tradition of confession continues to influence the nature of online admissions. This technique is called Exomologesis or "publishing oneself"
• Fear of missing out


  The lack of privacy in many aspects of social media can leave the users feeling vulnerable, leading to compulsively checking news feeds and continually adding tweets and postings in order to appear active and interesting
• Disinhibition effect


  A part of the reason for so much sharing and self-disclosure online. The lack of face-to-face gaze meeting, together with feelings of anonymity and invincibility, seems to free us up to self-disclose but also to sometimes "flame" others (toxic disinhibition)
• Self revelation


  • The sharing of information about self online facilitated by the disinhibition and confessional effects means that it's now far easier to prevent ourselves in ways that would have been awkward at best in predigital times
• Loss of control


  • At the same time, because of others' sharing, contemporary processes of self-management are not fully under our control
• Looking-glass self


  A social psychological concept introduced by Charles Horton Cooley. The concept describes the development of one's self and of one's identity through one's interpersonal interactions within the context of society
• Affirmation seeking

  • Friends also help to co-construct and re-affirm each others' sense of self through their postings, tagging, and comments
  • Teens also sometimes add self-disparaging comments on photos of themselves that they post in an apparent effort to seek validation or re-assurance
  • Blogging can also be seen as a form of affirmation seeking, rather than a one-way offering of opinions, experiences, and insights
• Non-digital objects that form a part of the extended self are often able to provide a sense of the past through their association with events and people in our lives
• In a digital world, there is a new set of devices and technologies for recording and archiving our memories
• Memory devices in the workplace included various "prosthetic" technological extensions of self
• Criticizes the outsourcing of many of the intimate things we used to do for ourselves as resulting in a diminished rather than enhanced extended sense of self
• Gordon Bell, a Microsoft engineer, has attempted to digitize his entire life, including his photos, documents, possessions, books, business meetings, and every bit of his past that can be reproduced digitally
• Photography plays a key role in facilitating autobiography memory. A photograph can be a message from a former self to a future self that is intended to recreate the emotion of the original experience
• Suggest declaring a digital executor who is empowered to go through the deceased's computer and delete things like adult content and sensitive e-mails that might prove embarrassing, if needed
• Digital clutter


  • It is the strategy of keeping everything and then searching for what we want to reconnect with at a later point in time. With physical possessions, we have only so much room to store things; but given the now inexpensive cost of digital storage and the efficiency of digital searches, there is little incentive to discard digital possessions