(I have tried to compile what I have read, researched and thought throughout the semester into a coherent essay. AT THIS POINT, ANY AND ALL COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME!)
Intimacy Among Strangers in Online Anonymous Communities
Long before the advent of online communities, people have reached out to and interacted with strangers, sometimes in very intimate and unique ways. A fellow passenger on a train, a message in a bottle, a graffiti-covered wall, anything that Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club would call a “single-serving friend”. Then travel became faster, distances shrunk with the ease of communication, extreme neolocality became the norm. The anomie that Kevin addresses started to manifest. In new physical surroundings, the convenience of connecting with others, known and unknown, in a virtual setting could not have more appeal. Trapper covered this in his look at the emergence of online communities.
Within these communities, we see a certain ethos emerge; specific core values of a community without physical characteristics other than the screen on which it appears. In such communities, the two core values that have emerged are authenticity and self-presentation. In both Brin and Emily’s subjects, we see how this deeply affects the way that individuals and communities view themselves. These distinct cultural aspects are particularly intriguing among communities of strangers. Detailed case studies of the “anonymous community art project” as a medium included Found Magazine, Project Mortified, and PostSecret. Though the exact medium within these three communities is a bit different, they all result in very deep, meaningful, and intimate connections among the participating strangers. Participants neither know nor care to know the identity of those with whom they feel connected. This project examines such connections and the need/desire for them in relation to art and creativity in our culture’s current state of computer-mediated communication.
Contemplating something made by a stranger is, in many ways, an archaeology of now. It allows us to closely inspect the lives of others and ourselves. Found Magazine is the most closely related to traditional archaeology as it involves trying to decipher a piece of someone’s life through something they never intended anyone to see. Participants submit letters, photos, shopping lists, or receipts that they have stumbled upon in parking lots, library books, or second-hand furniture. The site posts one new “find” each day, and invites viewers to interpret what may have been going on in the life of the person who wrote that letter, posed for that picture, or made that shopping list. One of the most popular finds is a crumpled paper, found on the floor at an elementary school, containing a student’s “Plan To Take Over World.”
Comments deduced that, “this kid is a go-getter. He's got a vision, he's got goals, and he's got a plan. Granted, it's a bad plan, but he's young,” and, “knowing about things like Microsoft and the word 'dictator', seems like this kid is a pretty smart cookie.” The draw to a site that posts “anything that gives a glimpse into someone else's life” shows not that we are nosy or curious, but that true authenticity is deeply cherished, even if it is a truly authentic desire to “kill 5th grade.”
The value of authenticity is also readily seen in Project Mortified, the premise of which is “a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Adults share their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” All material is presented by its original author, and none of the language is to be changed. Participants present their material at live shows, which are recorded and posted to the website. Visitors to the site are also invited to submit embarrassing stories or pictures from their adolescence on the message boards. The contributions and performances range from unflattering yearbook photos to one man’s diary entry (read aloud) venting about the neighborhood boy who “tied me to a tree and took my shoes. He took my shoes!”
The presentations are always comical; presenters delight in the chance to amuse others with their childhood traumas. Surfacing those memories is a true “excavation” process. This term does evoke a connection to archaeology, but the subject of study is shifted from that of Found Magazine. Rather than analyzing the life of a complete stranger, the artifacts are those of a “past self”, and the viewing of that past self as a different person. In doing so, participants in Project Mortified make a connection with that person that causes self-reflection.
Giving that self-reflection an audience has a powerful effect. Clive Thompson addresses this in his article, “Web Ushers in Age of Ambient Intimacy”. He writes that “having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they're trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.” He concludes with, “In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself.” The interactions seen thus far in Found Magazine and Project Mortified really show the complexity of this thing we call the "self" and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it. Of what we do in these online communities, psychologist Kenneth Gergen, author of The Saturated Self, "more charitably regards it as 'playing out our other selves.'” It is identity experimentation; individual become more deeply connected with parts of themselves that were previously unknown. This is where PostSecret becomes very relevant.
PostSecret, the brainchild of Maryland native Frank Warren, began as an experiment on Blogger.com. It is the most intentional form of intimacy with strangers because the content is created for that very purpose. Warren invited users to submit their deepest, darkest secret on one side of an anonymous postcard. That was four years ago, and the secrets have not stopped coming. Every Sunday, thirty new, handmade postcards appear on the blog, which boasts over 226 million hits (while writing this sentence alone, it received nearly 300 more). Frank Warren also updates fans of the project on a traditional blog; the first post on that site was flooded with comments. Though hateful troll comments are quite common on popular, public sites, only seven mean or profane posts appeared on Warren’s first blog post. The remaining comments—all 317 of them—were PostSecret fans reaching out to one another, sharing their secrets, or simply telling Warren, “Thank you.”
The deep connections among the more than 60,000 members of the PostSecret community have had profound impacts on their lives. One member found commentary on her secret on a stranger’s blog. She describes her experience in this email to Warren:
“The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: "This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way." I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.”
In fact, this is one of the reasons that PostSecret has the effect it does. The endless options provided by online communities to re/mis/define oneself allow anyone to not only be anyone, but to be anyones: multiple, distinctive identities depending on the network in use. In the presentation and maintenance of all of these facets of the self, it is no wonder that there are things we might not know about ourselves. That may be why many people experience emotional distress in recognizing such a thing on PostSecret: that recognition is a violence to the part of the self that does not want that secret to be true, or has been living as if it is not true. In this way, PostSecret has become a place for all of the things people have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network. That is what anonymity allows them to disclose. There is a real awareness of self-presentation, and a deep desire for authenticity.
A need to connect with strangers, therefore, has emerged as a response to the contradiction of those two values. The element of “microcelebrity” (with the online community as an audience) is important here because it limits the expression of authenticity to anonymity.
We are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it.
We do this through creation.
In the PostSecret community, as in any anonymous publication, ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors. Other online art projects and communities serve this same purpose, in deeply thought-provoking and pointlessly comical ways. Check out wefeelfine.org for the former, or fmylife.com for the latter. We will stretch and break the limits of the current code (as Kate and Steve have discussed) and find new ways to communicate and understand one another within it (as Greta’s research showed). Online anonymous communities have become our defining art form.
Regardless of the medium, art can still shatter us in the best way. It sparks a desire to ask big, impossible questions. Rather than “What is presentable?” or “What is cool?” we ask, “What is truth?” “What is beauty?” and, “Who am I?” In thinking of truth, a concern about authenticity reemerges. Frank Warren has recognized this in his answer to the question, “Are all the secrets true?” He responds,
“But I think of each postcard as a work of art. And as art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices. Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a strangers postcard.”
Thomas de Zengotita also recognizes this fluidity in the concept of truth in personal identity. In his book Mediated, he claims that “true and false” is no longer a relevant dichotomy:
“In a mediated world, the opposite of real isn’t phony or illusional or fictional—it’s optional. Idiomatically, we recognize this when we say, ‘The reality is…,’ meaning something that has to be dealt with, something that isn’t an option.” (14)
By this definition, one cannot say that a piece of someone’s identity is false. Each secret—a product of self-awareness and a desire for connection—is true because it creates a true connection to another individual. What this reveals overall is that complex, acute self-awareness is a source of creativity. The ability to intimately connect with a general, anonymous idea of “someone out there” (even through one small piece of truth) is a source of creativity. To create something that communicates truth is, more than anything, markedly and definably human.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Brain/snow storming*
I'm currently hammering out the text version of my project while little Manhattan is being hammered by some late-season wintry whiteness. As I do so, I'm realizing that this paper is basically a more refined version of my presentation from last week (posted below).
If you read through that, expect 1500 words worth of the same basic ideas with more citations to back them up. Sunday night will come quickly indeed!
-Katie
If you read through that, expect 1500 words worth of the same basic ideas with more citations to back them up. Sunday night will come quickly indeed!
-Katie
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Presentation Notes!
For anyone out there closely following my project, first of all, really? I'd love to chat with you! Second of all, you might be wondering where the heck my presentation update was. I did say I'd post it...
Friday the 13th got away from me with an early-morning spring break flight to Florida. Oops. No excuses. My apologies. Here are my notes in full, complete with slideshow pictures. This is basically a rough draft of my final project.
The PostSecret Effect: intimacy among strangers in online anonymous communities
We are so accustomed to anonymity that connecting with the content of strangers is comfortable— Kelly and Kevin both addressed this.
Contemplating something made by a stranger is a sort of present-day archaeology, of others (Found and PS) and ourselves (Mortified).
*These three sites are important because they represent three types of what you could call artifacts.
1. Accidental (Found, rather traditional of archaeology)
2. Intentional for the self (expression of that time, considered a record)
3. Intentional for others (traditional of artwork and intentionally revealing)
“Found” is the most basic element of connecting with strangers. The purpose of the project is trying to decipher a piece of someone’s life through something they never intended anyone to see. And that element alone shows not that we are nosy or curious, but that we really cherish something truly authentic.
Project Mortified is comical in its content. Described on the site as “a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Adults share their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” Some of the guidelines for being part of Mortified:
# Material must be presented by its original author.
# Material must be authentic; language is only altered to protect the innocent, awkward or angsty.”
In this, we see people connecting with their past selves, and enjoying that they are no longer that person. The “former self” essentially functions as a stranger, and there are two options: either we are able to understand that person through self-reflection, OR connecting with them causes self-reflection.
In either case, it more deeply connects people with themselves or parts of themselves that were previously unknown.
As we all read in Thompson’s article, “Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they're trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.” He concludes with, “In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself."
These interactions really show the complexity of this thing we call the "self" and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it. Of what we do in these online communities, psychologist Kenneth Gergen, author of Saturated Self: "more charitably regards it as 'playing out our other selves.'"
And this is where PostSecret becomes very relevant.
It is the most intentional form of intimacy with strangers because the content is created for that very purpose. It has had such a deep impact on people, as seen in the site’s Follow-Up stories.
“The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: "This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way." I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.”
PS has become a place for all of the things they have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network. That’s what people are willing to disclose.
A need to connect with strangers has emerged as a response to a contradiction of values: authenticity and self-presentation. The element of “microcelebrity” is important here because it limits our expression of authenticity to anonymity.
We're reconnecting with what we have now, and it is through disconnection. We are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it. And we do this through CREATION.
In the broader context of anonymity and identity, it pulls us away from the emerging mad/smart/bot mobs and back to the "Great American Poets" part where ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors.
This is manifesting in so many different ways, especially as we learn more about how to use Web 2.0, XML, and other design programs. They have become our defining art form.
Regardless of the medium, art can still shatter us in the best way.
It sparks a desire to ask those big, impossible questions. Rather than “What is cool? What is trendy?” we start asking, “What is truth?” “What is beauty?” and of course,“Who am I?”
Frank Warren has recognized this in his answer to the question, “Are all the secrets true?”
“But I think of each postcard as a work of art. And as art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices. Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a strangers postcard.”
So what this is revealing overall is that complex, acute self-awareness is the source creativity and creation. This is, more than anything, markedly and definably human.
(Read out loud: 6 ½ minutes)
-Katie
Friday the 13th got away from me with an early-morning spring break flight to Florida. Oops. No excuses. My apologies. Here are my notes in full, complete with slideshow pictures. This is basically a rough draft of my final project.
The PostSecret Effect: intimacy among strangers in online anonymous communities
The two core values that have emerged in my observation of these communities are *AUTHENTICITY and SELF-PRESENTATION.
Keep those in mind, so we can come back to them later.
Keep those in mind, so we can come back to them later.
We are so accustomed to anonymity that connecting with the content of strangers is comfortable— Kelly and Kevin both addressed this.
Contemplating something made by a stranger is a sort of present-day archaeology, of others (Found and PS) and ourselves (Mortified).
*These three sites are important because they represent three types of what you could call artifacts.
1. Accidental (Found, rather traditional of archaeology)
2. Intentional for the self (expression of that time, considered a record)
3. Intentional for others (traditional of artwork and intentionally revealing)
“Found” is the most basic element of connecting with strangers. The purpose of the project is trying to decipher a piece of someone’s life through something they never intended anyone to see. And that element alone shows not that we are nosy or curious, but that we really cherish something truly authentic.
Project Mortified is comical in its content. Described on the site as “a comic excavation of the strange and extraordinary things we created as kids. Adults share their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more.” Some of the guidelines for being part of Mortified:
# Material must be presented by its original author.
# Material must be authentic; language is only altered to protect the innocent, awkward or angsty.”
In this, we see people connecting with their past selves, and enjoying that they are no longer that person. The “former self” essentially functions as a stranger, and there are two options: either we are able to understand that person through self-reflection, OR connecting with them causes self-reflection.
In either case, it more deeply connects people with themselves or parts of themselves that were previously unknown.
As we all read in Thompson’s article, “Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they're trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.” He concludes with, “In an age of awareness, perhaps the person you see most clearly is yourself."
These interactions really show the complexity of this thing we call the "self" and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it. Of what we do in these online communities, psychologist Kenneth Gergen, author of Saturated Self: "more charitably regards it as 'playing out our other selves.'"
And this is where PostSecret becomes very relevant.
It is the most intentional form of intimacy with strangers because the content is created for that very purpose. It has had such a deep impact on people, as seen in the site’s Follow-Up stories.
“The person wrote the following in reaction to my secret: "This quote, part of a PostSecret postcard this week, has been resonating within me since I read it. It makes me want to cry. And scream. And laugh. And it makes me angry. And it comforts me that somewhere out there someone feels the same way." I had the support I needed all along in the heart of a stranger.”
PS has become a place for all of the things they have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network. That’s what people are willing to disclose.
A need to connect with strangers has emerged as a response to a contradiction of values: authenticity and self-presentation. The element of “microcelebrity” is important here because it limits our expression of authenticity to anonymity.
We're reconnecting with what we have now, and it is through disconnection. We are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it. And we do this through CREATION.
In the broader context of anonymity and identity, it pulls us away from the emerging mad/smart/bot mobs and back to the "Great American Poets" part where ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors.
This is manifesting in so many different ways, especially as we learn more about how to use Web 2.0, XML, and other design programs. They have become our defining art form.
Regardless of the medium, art can still shatter us in the best way.
It sparks a desire to ask those big, impossible questions. Rather than “What is cool? What is trendy?” we start asking, “What is truth?” “What is beauty?” and of course,“Who am I?”
Frank Warren has recognized this in his answer to the question, “Are all the secrets true?”
“But I think of each postcard as a work of art. And as art, secrets can have different layers of truth. Some can be both true and false, others can become true over time depending on our choices. Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a strangers postcard.”
So what this is revealing overall is that complex, acute self-awareness is the source creativity and creation. This is, more than anything, markedly and definably human.
(Read out loud: 6 ½ minutes)
-Katie
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Update & Presentation Plan
Today, I was in the Media section of Borders Bookstore in Lee's Summit, Missouri. While flipping through some intriguing biographies of random ("macro")celebrities, I stumbled upon two of Frank Warren's PostSecret books. While my mind rifled through all of my past posts (and reminded me that this blog post had to be up by midnight tonight), I smiled and picked up the The Secret Lives of Men and Women.
A friendly employee noticed that I had pulled it off the shelf, and said, "Those books are cool, huh?" I jumped at the opportunity to turn his friendly remark into an informal interview.
I responded, "Yeah! Why do you think people like them so much?"
He shrugged, "I guess people get sick of Hollywood bullsh*t. That stuff's real."
This may not be a valid source to use in my project; I don't even know the guy's name. But his comment confirmed one of my KYHOIs*: Authenticity is highly valued, but limited to anonymity in its expression because of our contradicting value of self-presentation.
Of all the KYHOIs* I plan to present this week, that is likely the second-most important one. When deciding where I fit into the bigger story that we're trying to tell, we concluded that "The PostSecret Effect" works best as the final element.
I'm really excited about that placement; I will be able to pull the markedly and defineably human elements from everyones' topics to show what deep connections look like in our current context.
How we are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it.
How we can connect through disconnection.
How complex this thing we call the "self" is and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it.
How, regardless of the medium, art is still art and can still shatter us in the best way.
It's critical that these sites I'm looking at all claim to be "community art". My presentation will have to be highly visual, and so will probably resemble the talks that Frank Warren does at PS events. To ensure the comprehensive point that I'm going for, I want to address what the PS effect has to do with each element of our project. I almost have one KYHOI* for each part! So at the moment, I'm compiling pictures and writing (and re-writing) my points to match up with them.
I do intend to record my 5-minutes presentation. That will be up on Friday.
So come back then to find out all of my *knock-your-head-off ideas!
-Katie
A friendly employee noticed that I had pulled it off the shelf, and said, "Those books are cool, huh?" I jumped at the opportunity to turn his friendly remark into an informal interview.
I responded, "Yeah! Why do you think people like them so much?"
He shrugged, "I guess people get sick of Hollywood bullsh*t. That stuff's real."
This may not be a valid source to use in my project; I don't even know the guy's name. But his comment confirmed one of my KYHOIs*: Authenticity is highly valued, but limited to anonymity in its expression because of our contradicting value of self-presentation.
Of all the KYHOIs* I plan to present this week, that is likely the second-most important one. When deciding where I fit into the bigger story that we're trying to tell, we concluded that "The PostSecret Effect" works best as the final element.
I'm really excited about that placement; I will be able to pull the markedly and defineably human elements from everyones' topics to show what deep connections look like in our current context.
How we are simultaneously fighting anonymity and using it.
How we can connect through disconnection.
How complex this thing we call the "self" is and how we respond to a deeper personal discovery of it.
How, regardless of the medium, art is still art and can still shatter us in the best way.
It's critical that these sites I'm looking at all claim to be "community art". My presentation will have to be highly visual, and so will probably resemble the talks that Frank Warren does at PS events. To ensure the comprehensive point that I'm going for, I want to address what the PS effect has to do with each element of our project. I almost have one KYHOI* for each part! So at the moment, I'm compiling pictures and writing (and re-writing) my points to match up with them.
I do intend to record my 5-minutes presentation. That will be up on Friday.
So come back then to find out all of my *knock-your-head-off ideas!
-Katie
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Field Methods: How I'll find out more
With what I have already tapped into in this project, I've been able to form a great foundation for what I hope to be a great finished product. To tie all of this together, these are the bits from previous posts that are especially significant to my "big questions".
Initial purpose:
"In an online world where anonymity has produced hate, discourse, and things like Anonymous, it will be necessary to keep within our sight something that seems to have transcended the anomie, disconnection, and insignificance that threaten our increasingly technological existence."
Connecting to other pieces of the project:
"So maybe the historical parts of this project will tell how we got to be so disconnected, which will definitely show some mind-blowing stuff. I'm liking how PostSecret turns that around and will show how we're reconnecting with what we have now. The need to reconnect is a key point though."
"Considering this, can we still treat PS as a bright-sided contrast to /b/ over the span of our presentation? Definitely. In the broader context of anonymity and identity, it pulls us away from the emerging mad/smart/bot mobs and back to the "Great American Poets" part where ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors. And for the inceptors and those affected by them, a "sense of place" is recreated."
Assumptions/observations to explore:
"In a way, it is reinjecting raw humanity into these otherwise post-human interactions. Yet at the same time, it is still more of a mirror than a window. It connects with disconnection; anonymity still plays a huge role. In doing so, it more deeply connects people with themselves or parts of themselves that were previously unknown."
"That may be why many people experience emotional distress in recognizing such a thing on PostSecret: that recognition is a violence to the part of the self that does not want that secret to be true, or has been living as if it is not true."
"Here is the connection: as Thompson has outlined the effects of ambient intimacy to conclude that we are more self-aware, I believe I have found an answer to one of my initial questions.
Q: What are people willing to reveal about themselves behind a cloak of anonymity?
A: All of the things they have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network."
"So maybe through this continual shock [of self-awareness] that Wesch has noticed, PS functions as a place to pause and deposit the more difficult things."
"It really isn't strangers that PS, Found, and Mortified users are connecting with; it's content. They are connecting to the idea of a person through a picture, a postcard, a story. This might put a double-mediated spin on these communications."
The big questions:
What are people willing to reveal about themselves behind a cloak of anonymity?
How, then, might we determine the authenticity of interactions if there are things we might not know about ourselves?
Are we so drowned in self-presentation that we consider our overall reputation more valuable that honesty with a friend?
How I'll go about it:
Having compiled these pieces of my research thus far, it is clear that the answers I'm looking for are largely subjective. I will need to look at personal reactions and experiences, which will have to be done through interviews in any way possible. Hopefully, one of these interviews will be with Frank Warren or the people behind Found Magazine and Mortified. Much can also be gathered through checking these sites regularly.
As for more formal research, there is a lot to find in the area of social psychology and the effects of new media. I will continue traditional research in these areas to enhance my interviews and observations with relevant interpretation. The literature review (seen below) is only the start of what must be applicable my findings.
Within the interviews, ethical issues of privacy, disclosure, and copyright will have to be carefully considered. As many of the secrets on PostSecret are submitted anonymously for very obvious reasons, if I want to interview any of the postcard-senders, it may have to be done in a way that is sensitive to how those people wish to protect their identities.
In describing my so-called field methods, it's difficult to not connect to certain other pieces of this overall project. I see how it ties into history, microcelebrity, a crisis of significance, memes, and identity. That's what makes this an ideal case study: elements of nearly all of our subcatagories are evident here. I'm hoping to effectively communicate this in video/text/voice form as clearly as I can imagine it.
And I'm always up for suggestions.
-Katie
Initial purpose:
"In an online world where anonymity has produced hate, discourse, and things like Anonymous, it will be necessary to keep within our sight something that seems to have transcended the anomie, disconnection, and insignificance that threaten our increasingly technological existence."
Connecting to other pieces of the project:
"So maybe the historical parts of this project will tell how we got to be so disconnected, which will definitely show some mind-blowing stuff. I'm liking how PostSecret turns that around and will show how we're reconnecting with what we have now. The need to reconnect is a key point though."
"Considering this, can we still treat PS as a bright-sided contrast to /b/ over the span of our presentation? Definitely. In the broader context of anonymity and identity, it pulls us away from the emerging mad/smart/bot mobs and back to the "Great American Poets" part where ideas, expression, art, and truth are widely distributed with no biases toward their inceptors. And for the inceptors and those affected by them, a "sense of place" is recreated."
Assumptions/observations to explore:
"In a way, it is reinjecting raw humanity into these otherwise post-human interactions. Yet at the same time, it is still more of a mirror than a window. It connects with disconnection; anonymity still plays a huge role. In doing so, it more deeply connects people with themselves or parts of themselves that were previously unknown."
"That may be why many people experience emotional distress in recognizing such a thing on PostSecret: that recognition is a violence to the part of the self that does not want that secret to be true, or has been living as if it is not true."
"Here is the connection: as Thompson has outlined the effects of ambient intimacy to conclude that we are more self-aware, I believe I have found an answer to one of my initial questions.
Q: What are people willing to reveal about themselves behind a cloak of anonymity?
A: All of the things they have discovered about themselves that would have negative consequences within their social network."
"So maybe through this continual shock [of self-awareness] that Wesch has noticed, PS functions as a place to pause and deposit the more difficult things."
"It really isn't strangers that PS, Found, and Mortified users are connecting with; it's content. They are connecting to the idea of a person through a picture, a postcard, a story. This might put a double-mediated spin on these communications."
The big questions:
What are people willing to reveal about themselves behind a cloak of anonymity?
How, then, might we determine the authenticity of interactions if there are things we might not know about ourselves?
Are we so drowned in self-presentation that we consider our overall reputation more valuable that honesty with a friend?
How I'll go about it:
Having compiled these pieces of my research thus far, it is clear that the answers I'm looking for are largely subjective. I will need to look at personal reactions and experiences, which will have to be done through interviews in any way possible. Hopefully, one of these interviews will be with Frank Warren or the people behind Found Magazine and Mortified. Much can also be gathered through checking these sites regularly.
As for more formal research, there is a lot to find in the area of social psychology and the effects of new media. I will continue traditional research in these areas to enhance my interviews and observations with relevant interpretation. The literature review (seen below) is only the start of what must be applicable my findings.
Within the interviews, ethical issues of privacy, disclosure, and copyright will have to be carefully considered. As many of the secrets on PostSecret are submitted anonymously for very obvious reasons, if I want to interview any of the postcard-senders, it may have to be done in a way that is sensitive to how those people wish to protect their identities.
In describing my so-called field methods, it's difficult to not connect to certain other pieces of this overall project. I see how it ties into history, microcelebrity, a crisis of significance, memes, and identity. That's what makes this an ideal case study: elements of nearly all of our subcatagories are evident here. I'm hoping to effectively communicate this in video/text/voice form as clearly as I can imagine it.
And I'm always up for suggestions.
-Katie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)