How we represent ourselves online may be vastly different from real life. For me personally, most of the online profiles I have are bare of information that isn’t my name, my birthday and my general location because I don’t like having too much information about myself online. Of course, among my online accounts there’s probably a half full account of my personal information and if say my Twitter doesn’t have that information then it’s might be on Facebook and if it can’t be found on Facebook then I don’t have it online.
My Facebook profile has the bulk of my information due to a key difference. My family knows I have a Facebook and are friends with me, but they don’t follow me on twitter. Plus, they already know most of the information on my profile - even if they do forget my birthday. As a result of my family being able to see my posts, I’m more aware and cautious of posting anything too extreme or embarrassing. On twitter however, I feel a bit more relaxed in what I post because my family may know I have a twitter, but they don’t know what name my account is under. I don’t just go by Kristina all the time because nicknames exist in the world.
My front region online would be my Facebook profile. I don’t think there is a better filter for what someone posts than knowing their grandparents and parents can see what they post. That’s why the majority of my posts are either pictures of me or updates about how I’m doing.
Online my back region would be my Twitter since I don’t have to be concerned about family seeing my tweets.
Connecting Online Identity to Online Dating, I think of the difference from a platform like Match.com or EHarmony and Tinder. You are asked a lot more questions on a dating site than on Tinder. The extent of the questions asked by Tinder gender preference, age preference and search distance. That’s a lot different from being asked about your personality and hobbies.
The more anonymity provided by a dating service, the less control we feel we have to exude over our own actions. One of the positives of Tinder is that you don’t even have to talk to the person unless “It’s a Match” and you both have green swiped each other. The main downside is that you’re mostly judging someone by their pictures if they don’t have a little biography filled out and whatever likes you may or may not have in common.
With more anonymity, people tend to be more judgemental and less restrained in their comments. Due to the anonymity, there's no accountability for people’s words or actions. People can practically say or do anything they want without much fear of any consequences. After all it it’s a fake profile, what are the odds of an average person trying to dig into the life of a person who harmed them in some way? Unless you’re on Catfish, it’s unlikely that you’ll know if that’s a truthful account or if someone just loves making others lives miserable through lies and deceit.
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