Throughout the courses of many people’s lives, they possess identities that can be altered through life events and self-awareness. While it may be difficult for someone to change his or her identity in reality, it can be incredibly easy to forge one in online contexts. For example, it can be difficult for someone to hide their ethnicity or gender from the real world, but the digital world offers much more discretion and self-preservation for his or her true identity. Huffaker and Calvert mention that many physical constraints become flexible in the digital format, which proves that people should be very careful about whom they associate with online.
CMC contexts can also show how people present and interpret race and gender. For instance, a report by Grasmuck, Martin, and Zhao explains how Ethno-Racial groups interpret themselves on cyber-space responses. They discovered that most Latinos like to post long messages, while most Indian and White individuals prefer to keep their responses shorter and made to the point. Despite the large amount of differences between races, even when they are online, this has made me think little on the differences that I more than likely have compared to my classmates. This is mainly because I prefer to judge people on their personalities rather than their race or gender. I know that makes me sound like a cheesy equality commercial, but it is true, nevertheless. One assumption that I have made from the readings is that gender and race can mean little if the user decides to create a false identity on the internet.
You’re right that it is easier online than it is offline to hide certain parts of our identity, like race, gender, physical features, etc. But many of the readings this week explained that, at least on some of the more nonymous channels like Facebook and weblogs, users aren’t drastically altering their identities. Rather, they’re constructing their images to accentuate certain features that might be considered more socially alluring than others. One of the readings also mentioned that many women readily identity themselves as women, thus continuing to perpuate and playing into their stereotypical gender roles.
It is true that it is easier to hide personal facts about oneself online than offline, such as race and gender but all that means nothing if there is a false profile created. They are not trying to create a better picture of themselves, but creating a totally different person, maybe role playing someone they want to be or cant be. That is why I prefer to add only people I know on facebook because there are so many people out there ready to deceive you.
It would have been helpful if the length of messages of Hispanic CMC users vs. Indian and white CMC users was put into more context. There could be many factors there. The value of small talk or lengthy explanations may have more value in one culture whereas brevity may be valued in the other. It would also have been helpful to know if one culture is more exposed to English as a second language than the other. It would stand to reason that if you are still uncomfortable with the language, you might do more communicating online where you have unlimited time to compose your writing.
It is much easier to craft and control a certain presentation online. In reality, it can be difficult to manage our public self. Online, we can filter and polish the preferred image that we want to show. We can either hide or downplay certain traits that would categorize us. Certain stereotypes might be slower to hinder opinions and other redeeming qualities would have a chance to become more evident. It is also possible to express such traits positively and associate with empathetic others to gain more acceptance. The presentation and interaction can create a more flexible realm than reality.
I am sure that you are not trying to be cheesy equality commercial and that you are saying what your really think. I also agree with you that people should be judged by their personality not race or gender. But let’s think about it, if you own a retail store, would you prefer to hire a beatiful women that would get you more customers or a man?Or if you have a travel agency and want to hire 4 employees, would you prefer to hire all women or men ? My point here is that we have to be realistic. In certain situations,even if you are not a prejudice and never thought about race or gender, you will do things that would benefit yourself even if you don’t believe that your choice was fair.
It is, in fact, much easier to hide ourselves in a virtual world. Which is also the scary thing of people who almost hide in a virtual life. Who are these people, really? And what are they hiding? It can be very dangerous and many people have strong opinions of instances of this.