Proud Of Me

       Have you ever thought about the possibility that a woman you married and have known (from  Facebook) for about 8 months before the marriage is actually.. a dude? That kind of question may well be asked by many people after learning of the story about about a man mistakenly marrying a woman he met on Facebook. This all transpired in early 2011 when a man from a Jakarta suburb reported a case about his wife committing fraud with regard to her identity, he never knew that the wife he had been living with for some months was actually a man.

      Imagine a world where you can be anyone you want to be, who you would choose to be? It sounds like quite a silly question, but it’s happening. With the fast pace of growth in information technology, the sharing of information from people all over the world increased; whether for business or personal relationships. It is likely that social media saw the fastest changes in scale and type of content. According to Comscore (2011), quoted from R. Kay Green’s article in the Huffington Post titled “The Social Media Effect: Are You Really Who You Portray Online?”. It would appear that about 90% of US internet users visit social media each month. It’s becoming increasingly important because social media helps you to promote your brand and help you expand your social network. Facebook, currently having over 500 million active users, could be used as an effective advertising medium and tool for self-promotion online.

     Like it or not, that certain persona we promote online may not be not quite a fully accurate representation of ourselves in real life. Most people will carefully carve a certain image about themselves on social media, taking seriously people’s perspective about our actions online, treating our life online just as we would live our life in the real world. Remember the pictures taken by your co-workers in their last vacation maybe? Or how fancy the restaurants were in which they had dinner? Or maybe where they last hung out last at the weekend? Sadly, the reality about online persona we create is that it is so often turned into a happiness competition, with an urge to post an image of a cool or exciting life and not the dull one that would very often be the real case. Andrew Hough (2013) in his Telegraph article stated that at least one in four women exaggerated or distorted what they are doing in social media once a month. There’s a need for them to show that their lives aren’t boring, spurred on by jealousy about other people’s more exciting posts. This confirms that many who post online feel a need to impress their friends and acquaintances, regardless of if they are from the real or online world.  And what’s a more depressing fact is, these phenomenon actually give a paradox effect to the participants, as people attempt to stay connected on social media, it may well make them feel more isolated instead.

      So, who are we supposed to be online? Before deciding about creating a certain persona in our online life, according to R Kay Green (2013) there are three factors to consider while doing social network activities:  

     *)  Stop comparing ourselves to others
Comparing ourselves to other means we’re actually comparing ourselves with our perception of what we think other people are. Ideal self is what we perceive as “what are we should be” while our real self is what we actually are. People will naturally tend to just present their ideal self online, therefore we would all just end up comparing ourselves with the ideal figure of another person, instead of their true representation.
     *)  Authenticity is the key
We must not be afraid about showing our true self to other people. People like individuals who are able to stay true to themselves. Examine who we really are, identify our own best attributes, determine what makes us unique and focus attention on that which may enhance our character.
     *)  Align our “ideal” self with our “real” self 
Use our online “ideal” self as a motivation to actually make strides to change and improve our real life. 

So, now ask yourself, what kind of person would you like to be in your online world? I think you’ve a good idea about who you want to be by now, and I hope you would be that certain persona for good cause ;)
  
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