Cut and Paste Identities:

Creating our own Realities Online

Introduction

Attempting to define ourselves online induces mild forms of identity crisis. As we present identity, mediate personal relationships and endeavor to control privacy through online mediums, we create and participate in a blending of realities. This fusion has resulted in new systems of social interaction which involve extreme changes to how we develop and present the self; to how we maintain and interact with personalized networks; and to how we connect and participate with communities. These are revolutionary methods of social interaction which benefit individuals and communities world wide, yet they impose restrictions on how we communicate and remove us from our immediate environments. As we explore and experience the realities of social interaction in the online world, we become ‘dwellers on the threshold between the real and the virtual’ (Turkle, S. 1997), obliged to develop our own systems for navigating identity and community across these mediums.