What's Your Persona?

As human beings we are constantly evolving: physically, mentally and emotionally. During our evolution we develop a personality, a personality that can change with age and experience. However, if our personality remains stagnant it is still difficult to “render all at once the entire complexity of a personality” (Phillip Lopate). In our everyday encounters we offer a mere fragment of ourselves: one mask or persona. If we remove one of the masks, it is only to substitute it with another. When we allow a person to get to know us, our entire being, all of our personas will then accumulate, to what we hope, is an honest unmasking. An unmasking that unites all of our fragments, creating one self. A self that reflects the authenticity of our being. Until that moment, we pick and choose the fragments of ourselves we wish to portray to our selected audience. In a world consumed by social media, the personas unmasked on Facebook are constantly evolving as the user updates their newsfeed.

I have realized through my own Facebook persona and observation of other users, that there is a lot of overlap in personalities and personal agendas. This overlapping factor is the need or urge to self-present, while Facebook mediates how we accomplish this, through our relations and abilities to reach one another. Although Facebook gratifies its users in different ways depending on their individual personalities, it was still founded upon an architecture that has a large influence on how it’s used and who is likely to use it. The site limits how users can change the appearance of their profile pages. Unlike Myspace, where users could develop their own template, include a theme song for their page, and upload various icons, Facebook has eliminated that clutter or opportunity for creativity. On Facebook, the only opportunity for creativity is through uploading photographs. A person’s personality can be developed through these photographs or via their usage of the site and how they interact with other users. This allows Facebook’s users to have multiple personas.

           

I do recognize that my Facebook personas have constantly changed and change more so then I like to think. These fragments of my self that have been spread across this site, at one time or another, have been a part of me. They depict who I am, who my friends are, where I’ve traveled and what I’ve done. They shed light into one of my many personas. I won’t ever be fully unmasked to the public eye, the unmasking I save for those I believe matter.

-Andrea N.