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{1.2a1a3} digital embodiment requires writing yourself into being
topics: [[identity]]
All of digital embodiment is performance because there is no “being” in the space without writing oneself into it — by your words, through video, through engagement, etc. You must act to be digitally embodied, where you only have to be to be corporeally embodied.
You have to articulate the self. Recreate the self. I think that’s partially why authenticity online is a impossible — you cannot write yourself without performing the self. There is no objectivity. In other words: Being online inherently requires you to curate a persona.
This comes from danah boyd, who wrote about this idea of articulating identity online on the early social networking platform Friendster. It was a challenge for early social media users because, for the first time, they had to think about what to formalize and broadcast about themselves in this limited environment. It’s further exacerbated by the {1.2a2} context collapse of social context.
2024-06-23 — I’ve been thinking about whether the overarching Thing I’m “studying” can be called digital embodiment, but it sounds like this has a pretty specific meaning these days related to actually being embodied in digital spaces.