I believe that people who actively participate
in virtual community activities nowadays are aware of the great difference
between online self and real self, the one you create and present as you want
and the one you are really like in real life. Sherry Turkle’s TED talk, even
was in 2012, really pointed out the current worrying situation that “people are
being alone together”. I did remind me of so many familiar scenes taking place
in real life where teenagers are obsessed with video games and become more
rebellious against parents, people still find loneliness when they have many
online friends, people who develop psychological disorders and are not able to
deal with real lives. Situations are completely different and more complicated
than the time when we are celebrating and embracing the fantastic new life
online.
The idea that I support most is the
psychological motivation that shape and decide people’s engagement in virtual
community. I think what people say and do online is driven by psychological
needs and wants. With larger scale of virtual online activities, some people’s
obsession with this unreal dream cause endless psychological desire to
interacted with the unreal self in online community. Here I would like to
mention an ongoing phenomenon online.
As social media take large part of people’s
life, some people find it fascination to share their good life and receive good
comments by faking themselves as almost perfect. They take pretty pictures with
photoshop and got millions of followers online, which satisfy their vanity
which they don’t have in real life. This seemingly beautiful experience being
under the spotlight lure so many people to recreate their images in virtual
world. It eve gave rise to an occupation in China, which we call “online
celebrities”. People paid any price to do plastic surgery just to be looked
pretty in pictures, or some just live on photoshop. They beautiful images they
show on social networks to their fans soon become like their real life.
However, after their psychological desire is satisfied, this causes other
serious psychological problem: they can no longer accept the self who they
really are. As I read in news, some “online celebrities” died in plastic
surgery to be more beautiful on their facebook, some had MDD when they find
themselves are not beautiful in front of the mirror, some live always in fear
that others may find out their secrets. All these psychological desires, motivations
and depression create a circle chain that distort their normal life and force
them to live forever with masks.
Personally, I find this kind of life is
horrible when you feel you have to create lies to cover your lies, and have
real happiness from real life. “We expect more from technology and less from
each other”, says Sherry, because virtual world meets our vanity and provides
us a utopia of all perfect things. When we get used to the perfection online,
we no longer want a real talk, real friend, even real love. When we become
afraid to real conversation and real life, when our expectation fail,
technology may lead to very dangerous consequence.
However, psychological problems are always
hard to cure, so as the powerful influence of virtual life created by internet
technology. It true that when we firstly invented and introduced the fabulous
technology into our lives, no one predicted the consequences today. Now as we
study more about online behaviors and connect it into psychological field, we
should head our way to conduct people to understanding critically about the
foam and illusion world in online world and avoid to be controlled by it.
Hi Jingshan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your great post!
Your blog this week reminds me that even though online communication can help with self-esteem and has many other advantages over face-to-face communication as mentioned in one of the readings, there are lots of illusions in the virtual world. While people are enjoying themselves and the "beautiful life" online, they must be cautious so as not to lose themselves.
Your example about Chinese online celebrity is very interesting. As far as I know, there is a set pattern for the online celebrities to become famous in China: They find agencies to train and promote themselves, post their "beautiful life" online to attract followers, do plastic surgery and then sell their products or post advertisements to make profits. Lots of young girls in China today admire such online celebrities very much. They imitate the way the celebrities post pictures and talk online. Some of them even try to become an online celebrity themselves. However, what I want to say is that, when the girls are keeping up themselves with the online celebrities, they are actually losing themselves. For one thing, lots of Chinese girls go to the plastic surgery hospital. As a result, they lose their personal features and it's weird that in a party, people can see many girls look the same.
Moreover, many people adore the life of Chinese online celebrities excessively. As a result, they over-worship luxuries, enjoyment, money and beauty. Nevertheless, these should not be the ultimate goals for all the people. Everyone has different interests and life goals. If the aims of everyone is to pursue the life of the Chine online celebrities, I can't imagine how boring the world will be.
Last but not least, when people share their retouched photos and posts online, they are also deceiving themselves, which may further make them lose themselves. If people keep sharing their perfect life online, it's possible that they will finally assure themselves with the illusion that they are really living such a perfect life in the real world. As a result, people cannot understand themselves correctly and they may lose the fighting will for a better life.
Therefore, I agree with you that people should be aware of the deficiency of communication online. In my blog, I compare face-to-face communication with text-based communication. I think there are non-transcendent advantages for face-to-face communication to become the dominant communicative method in people's life.
Hi Mengqi,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your reply. I was very shocked by the "online celebrities" phenomenon and its association with psychological problemms. Also I am thinking how big cultural change that the virtual world can bring about and how deep it will reshape our social relations. Hope to have discussion with you in class.