interview

Constructing Identity Online: Classnotes

1 What is identity?
Identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is, the characteristics determining this. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary)
2. Interview classmates:
How many online identities do you have? What are they like?
One. A name which attracts girl. E.g. sweet heart, Handsome


On your blog write a two paragraph report on a class member who has an interesting set of online identities (you may use pseudonyms ie fake names)

my interviewee is Lui Ka Yi. she got several fake names online. she usually used it in forum or chat room where many youngsters sought for boyfriend or girlfriend. her fake names were designed to attract people to talk with her. for example, Honey, sweet heart, your man, etc. such identity had great difference with her real identity. She changed her gender and act as a boy to talk to the girls to gain excitement from 'role play'.

the fake identity confided her to talk more and created an ideal role which she could not play in the reality. she was so dedicated into the role that she was confused with the fake and the real identity. the fake identity was more adorable and attractive to her that she got lost in the self identity. She even wondered if she was lesbian. But finally, when forum and chat room reclined, she also stopped this game. Now, she uses her real mean in the factory.


Contemporary understandings of identity are changing. Nowadays identity is thought of in more complex terms:


“In sum, the selves that we have are composed of multiple identities and contradictory experiences. In late-modern society, it is almost impossible to have a fully unified, completed and coherent ‘self’; rather, we all tend to have fleeting, multiple and contradictory selves”
(Charles Cheung “Presentations of Self on Personal Homepages”, p45)