Post 3: Cyber Selves

A symbolic marker helps you present yourself to others how you want them to see you, they say something about the way you want to present yourself, and how you feel you fit in with a certain group (Thurlow, Lengel, & Tomic, 2004). They can be anything from clothing, to how you get your hair cut, to how you speak in front of others. Online these markers can be a bit more difficult to find and there are much less to be judged upon. In most cases the main component of your online symbolic markers is your words: what your tone is, what you say, how you say it, your spelling, your grammatical usage, etc. Of course there are pictures and the links to which you post to show that you're interested in certain things, but the impressions we create are formed heavily from your words and your actions through those words.

When it comes to our identities, our self-presentations, we are really representing two different forms of ourselves because "there are two of [us]" (Conlin, 2006), the warm-blooded version who interacts face-to-face with everyone and our online version, who Conlin suggests is becoming more and more difficult to control. Before I never noticed this two version self of myself, but in completing this week's readings I found it to be more evident than before. I never thought I was maintaining two versions of myself, but I am, and it is difficult to watch what I post on social networking sites, blogs, etc. I feel like I am still me no matter if it's my online self or my warm-blooded self. I would say that I do not alter my online identity and I post as if I were actually speaking to that person. I do not post things that I wouldn't say to my friends in real life...and those that know me in real life know what I would and would not say.

Thurlow et al. talk about people taking on multiple identities throughout their lives and "find[ing] new was to represent themselves to the world" and I believe that this holds true for a majority of people. We are not the same person we were at the age of 17 or 28 or 54. We consistently change and shape ourselves into who we think we should be, whether our identities are influenced by media, family, friends, our interests, goals, morals, values, etc. The more we find out about who we are and who we want to be the more we try to change our identities to become that vision. I can say that I have experienced changing my identity as I have gotten older, not by much but I have become more certain about particular aspects of my life, but at the same time I have become bogged down with questions about decisions in my life that need to be made...and to me that is also part of figuring out who I am because the answers to those questions help define who I am and what I want to do.


Conlin, M. (2006). You are what you post. Business week, 3977, 52-53.

Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer-mediated communication: social interaction and the internet. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.