In order to participate fully in most online discourses (forums, social networks, etc.), a profile is required, and in that profile, a picture. But this picture can be of anything, and by proxy, the individual (to others, at least), can be anything.
Role playing can be a way of inverting and exploring the self, making the internal external; it is wearing our hearts on our sleeves, in a sense, in that it can be both the expression of a desire and the fulfillment of that desire as well. For this reason, there are sites like GaiaOnline where the main objective is to obtain gold and purchase a vast variety of clothes, accessories, and mods to apply to one’s avatar. This is the entire purpose of this site: create an avatar that is the utmost expression of something, whether that’s the real world version of yourself, a fantastical interpretation of yourself, or, one of the more popular options, create an avatar wearing all the most expensive and obscure items as a show of status and time logged. Similarly, I have known people who've spent more time constructing avatars and elaborate neighborhoods in The Sims than actually playing the game. These avatars are representations of ourselves in a representative world, and so it is tempting to dismiss them as meaningless and childish interpretations. And yet, because this version of the self is self chosen, self created (virtual worlds give us the bizarre opportunity to birth ourselves), it is at least as accurate a form as your real flesh, if not more so because of its externalization of the internal. The myth that all things virtual take a secondary position to the "real" must be dispelled: it delegitimatizes the very real personal processes that take place there.
Part II
And so if images can be worn and spoken through, can language itself be worn and manipulated for the purpose of creating a certain image?
Absolutely--this is something we see in the real world, and there (here?) it is more often done out of necessity than self exploration. Megan Foss, a convict turned professor talks about how she used her letter writing skills to convince those in positions of power of her readiness to rejoin society; but it wasn't until later that she able to merge this way of writing, of speaking, a sort of fabricated version of herself whose first purpose was to get her out of jail, with her primary discourse, her street language and the things she'd learned and lived through there. She was eventually able to do just as Freire suggests--use the dominant discourse to empower her own.
Written word allows the writer better control over what they say and how they say it. In my literacy narrative, I wrote about how my mother will ask me for help when writing official reports and memos for work, as her English isn't too good. When she does this, she momentarily borrows some of my literacy skills to appear polished and professional, not because she doesn't have these qualities, but because she doesn't speak the language associated with them. This helps ease over conflicts at work, which help her keep her job, keep her paycheck, which she can then use for her own interests. If you cannot talk the talk of the dominant discourse, you may still be able to gain membership by writing the words of it.
An identity based on images or text, then, is entirely manipulatable. But this word has such a negative connotation--let us say malleable instead. If stereotypes are simplifications of a person, then to reverse this, to disseminate one's self into the pieces of their identity and thereby make one's self irreducibly complex is to circumvent stereotypes. This is the potential I see in the fostering of multiple and varied identities, like the ones on GaiaOnline. Although, as I mentioned, stereotypes and prejudice certainly do not vanish from these spheres, but they lose most of their bite when the things they're often based on, sight and sound, are removed. Whether they take the title or not, all those who engage in the new media become authors, illustrators, and filmmakers in the ways they choose to craft their identity on the screen. This may sound like a bit of a stretch, and I might agree if the example is a profile on Facebook. But the creative potential is there, and some do use it. I certainly try to. In my blog, I experiment with different writing styles and dialects (I can't speak with a Southern accent, but I often enjoy writing with one); in addition to my main account on Plurk, a social networking site similar to Twitter, I've created another--Fuzzcat, a cynical voice for posthumanism thoughts and a cache for relevant research materials. By distancing these things from the self, one is better able to gain perspective and deal with them--malleability at its best.
