On the mutability of self
I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon of chatting online, which has been thrust to the forefront of modern communication with the proliferation of instant messaging clients and online dating services. I hardly go a day without at least a short conversation or two with a friend on AIM or MSN, and know quite a few people that behave similarly. But why, especially in an age where anyone over five has a cell phone, is this such a popular means of correspondence?
I believe one of the biggest appeals is the lack of commitment necessary in an online conversation. A phone call signs away your attention for the duration, as it is difficult to do too much more than talk without seeming obviously distracted. Indeed, one is open to a very high level of personal examination, as voice is a much more telling thing than, say, text on a screen. Intonation and mood can have a large impact on your perceived meaning, and you’ve very little time to moderate or contemplate your responses.
Conversely, an online chat can be carried out with minimal attention. It is easy to keep up a conversation with a response every few minutes while still devoting the bulk of your time to other tasks, and even longer response times are not an abnormal occurrence. This facet also allows for a much greater level of self-editing, making it possible to massage your thoughts into whatever you think the most pleasing configuration before committing to your reply with a press of the ’send’ button. Mood becomes much less of an issue as well, as the recipient has only your carefully crafted sentences to gauge you, along with whatever extraneous chat elements (e.g., smilies) you include.
It is likely that texting (which amounts to instant messaging on cell phones) has become popular for similar reasons. Though slower than its computer-based equivalent, it offers the same abstraction that makes the former so appealing, with the added benefit of mobility (on the parts of both the sender and the recipient). I’ve always found this amusing, what with its seeming backward nature (moving from voice to text-based communication), but within the context of the outlined benefits it doesn’t seem like such an odd development.
What I don’t believe people always realize, however, is a more subconscious benefit of this arrangement. Given the high levels of self-revision that occur in online chats, it’s almost inevitable that you alter the perception others will have of you. When put on the spot (e.g., during a phone or face-to-face conversation) there is much less time to be anyone other than yourself, or to spin some version of you that might be less than fully accurate. Online, however, it becomes entirely possible to carefully cultivate your persona into whatever you’d like, or whatever best fits the situation. For instance, I often find myself adapting to the individual quirks of each person I chat with online, using different styles of humor, syntax, and diction. This approximates similar processes that occur with real-world acquaintances, but can be developed much more fully, especially if your physical interaction with a given online contact is minimal.
In a sense the self becomes an almost entirely mutable concept, subject only to your whim and the present conversation. Your electronic identity, unhindered by the usual restraints of a physical existence, can be as fluid as you like, and subsequently can come off quite differently depending on your chatting partner. You may, if desired, span a multitude of personalities across a single buddy list, a thought simultaneously marvelous and worrisome in its potential for ingenuity and misdirection.
It’s not something I dwell on when in the midst of an instant message exchange, but I do wonder if this sort of behavior is indicative of the need to be more skeptical of relationships we form in the digital age; or, perhaps more interestingly, whether it might signify a shift in what we have come to conceive of as relationships in general.
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