MEEZ IS A BREEZE!
Here is the avatar I created. He represents a male punk, who likes to be portrayed as bad and get in lots and lots of trouble. Likes to get in a lot of fights with men or women—doesn’t matter to him, as long as there is some type of controversy present, he is happy! Well in reality, this is the complete opposite of who I am. I am a female and am the type of person that stays clear of trouble and likes to portray a pretty good/innocent image. The one thing I hate is any type of controversy, I try and avoid it at all measures. This was my first time creating an avatar, and I must say I had a wonderful time doing so. It wasn’t the easiest thing to pick and choose from the hundreds of choices from hair color, skin color, personality type, to what kind of clothing. I’m a very indecisive person to begin with, so you can only imagine it took me a while to pick and choose every quality of my avatar.
This was my first time, creating an avatar and creating an identity of an opposite gender of what I really am. I don’t know how well I’d actually do going further into trying to portray myself as a male via the Internet, while communicating with others. I think Gurak brings up a good point when she talked about that there are different gender behaviors that help differentiate the communication style differences between male and females. Gurak states, “ …when women contributed, their language was attenuated and meek, while men’s language was assertive and imperative. Men made more statements while women asked more questions. Men were more sarcastic and self-promoting , while women often asked supportive questions and made apologies for themselves and their thoughts.� (72) I found this to be extremely interesting and I could definitely relate a lot to the women’s generalizations found in this study. I feel that men are more direct and to the point with particular answers to questions, while women have a tendency to elaborate on the answers, but this is just my personal opinion.
I guess I don’t really know how I feel about being able to play with identity so easily via the Internet. I personally haven’t seen any perks in my own experience, that would lead me to inform people I was a male verses a female. However according to Gurak, “It is true that switching gender via the Internet can be an enlightening experience, and many online participants have reported new insights when they logged in as the opposite sex.� (79). This brings up the credibility of people online as well. To what point to you trust the person you are communicating with, that they are feeding you truthful information? If people are willing to lie about their gender, what other measures about themselves are they willing to lie about?
Comments
I also tend to question the truthfulness of people on the Internet. It seems like unless there is some mechanism for accountability (like actually meeting Internet acquaintances), it makes sense to take everything on the web with a grain of salt. Which goes back to the idea of cyberliteracy, I suppose, the need to be able to evaluate electronic information just as we do the rest of our sources.
Then I started thinking the many types of online interactions that are perhaps more honest because a person's identity is secret-- gay chatrooms in countries where homosexuality is criminalized, or any type of sensitive advice-seeking situation, where a person might not even dare to ask a question if they knew they'd be found out. It's pretty clear that there's an upside to not being held accountable.
Posted by: e_rose | February 11, 2007 02:44 PM