Falling for Mirages
Posted on Friday, October 08 @ 00:37:28 CDT | Topic: Culture
by Jennifer Cuddy
The age of globalization has its pros and cons. We are now able to share ideas and engage in instant communication with others across the globe. This open forum has unlimited power to influence our ideologies, and has created an all inclusive online community without geographical borders. This expansion of the exchanging of ideas is having a tremendous impact on our ( otherwise limited) social circles. We now have an online mystique of our selves that is separate from our real selves engaged in normal day to day activities. Most certainly, our online selves are a grandiose like presentation that is manipulated, and therefore, not exactly a true representation of who we are in real life. Yet, people are becoming more and more gravitated towards these online relationships with people that are based upon mirage like identities. For example: Do we really know the true identity of the person behind the strokes of a keyboard?
At what point does this effect our social lives with the real people in our own communities? Are we disappointed in realism? Do we prefer this cyber reality to the real world? Has this effected our definition of identity and intimacy? Can we be truly intimate with our cyberspace friends? Or to the more extreme: Are our cyber space friends really our friends?
One stroke on the keyboard, and a cyberspace friend can be swiftly deleted. We move on, ever searching for more intrigue. But does this intrigue only add more fuel to the fire of a growing disappointment with reality? How closely do these myspace illusions of our selves match who we truly are? Or are our online mystiques most influenced by an innate need to be accepted, applauded, or even loved?
The age of globalization has its pros and cons. We are now able to share ideas and engage in instant communication with others across the globe. This open forum has unlimited power to influence our ideologies, and has created an all inclusive online community without geographical borders. This expansion of the exchanging of ideas is having a tremendous impact on our ( otherwise limited) social circles. We now have an online mystique of our selves that is separate from our real selves engaged in normal day to day activities. Most certainly, our online selves are a grandiose like presentation that is manipulated, and therefore, not exactly a true representation of who we are in real life. Yet, people are becoming more and more gravitated towards these online relationships with people that are based upon mirage like identities. For example: Do we really know the true identity of the person behind the strokes of a keyboard?
At what point does this effect our social lives with the real people in our own communities? Are we disappointed in realism? Do we prefer this cyber reality to the real world? Has this effected our definition of identity and intimacy? Can we be truly intimate with our cyberspace friends? Or to the more extreme: Are our cyber space friends really our friends?
One stroke on the keyboard, and a cyberspace friend can be swiftly deleted. We move on, ever searching for more intrigue. But does this intrigue only add more fuel to the fire of a growing disappointment with reality? How closely do these myspace illusions of our selves match who we truly are? Or are our online mystiques most influenced by an innate need to be accepted, applauded, or even loved?
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