WEEK7 Virginia Shea - Make yourself look good online

    When communicating online whether it is via WhatsApp with a friend, via email with a professor, via tinder with a match or in a forum with a complete stranger, we are using our online personality. I adhere to the idea that all of us have different personalities, I am not talking about having different underlying values and morals, just different ways of acting with different people. Just consider yourself when you are with your parents in comparison to when you are with your friends, or partner. I can hear myself changing my tone of voice, using a different vocabulary, maybe even changing my posture or even consider a change of wardrobe depending on what person or group I am with. One reason for that is that in my mind I have a picture of how other people might see me, or if I am to be honest, more of a picture of how I like to be seen by certain people.

    We all do it, sometimes we are aware of it, but often we do not even realize that we change who we are around certain people. We do it because we want our boss to see us as reliable, our friends to see us as fun and our family to see us as somebody reputable. An online personality is just another one we have. When moving online anonymously people often care less about consequences of their words or what other people think of them, as it is “anonymous”. However as soon as a profile picture is added, a real name or even if when using a sophisticated forum (that exchanges scientific, legal, educated ideas), what other people/users think of you becomes relevant again.

    If people would care about if they “looked good” on the internet, this would lead to them being more aware of their actions, in e.g. a scientific forum the quality of their posts. It would introduce a more natural way of online communication, as one would have to think before blurting out the words, or in this case writing them out. However, if introducing the dimension of “wanting to look good”, with the natural human disposition towards competition, it would also lead to “wanting to look better”. In general, if we would try to make ourselves look good, don’t we all have our own definition of what that means?  If this is supposed to be a tool of online communication, regarding issues such as cultural misunderstandings or just simply different opinions, how would being aware of this rule necessarily help? If we are aware that we are trying to look our best online, would that not mean that in our opinion everything we post is appropriate, therefore we will stand to, or one might even say “protect” our statement?

    Having just the rule that we want to look the best online will not reduce communicative barriers, but rather highlight the differences between users. If “looking good” is not defined for everybody the same way, then “looking good” is just an enforcement of character traits, which due to human difference can lead to conflicts. Getting to know your opposites traits is a good thing, independent on the quality of the traits, knowing who you are talking to is important. It is the element of honesty that is necessary to have a real online conversation. Therefore, I am not saying that people should not be their “best” online, but that one needs to be aware of what that means.

    Virginia Shea has multiple rules and although they offer some guidance on online behavior, they do not solve the problem of human differences. These human differences used to cause conflict on a personal and private level, however the net allows for one comment to be seen and reacted to by millions, breaking many barriers, such as the geographical one, between different societal groups. Thus, making each typed word more vulnerable to confrontation. These differences cannot be magically changed, and adding a rule will not affect them, however the impact of these differences can be limited by adding a commandment, possibly: Be accepting.