identity

yes things like public blogs and public profiles such as facebook, and websites like yelp, and twitter are various means for individuals to create an identity for themselves. if not create, then then at least to mold their identity down to the places they eat at, the things they choose to list as "interests" (as if one's interests can be explicitly stated so easily), and the music they want you to know they listen to (but not the embarassing stuff!). of course i am guilty of doing this. i am blogging right now, i have a facebook profile whose contents i ponder over for too long wondering whether i should add this supercute species of cactus as one of my newfound interests or not, and recently absorbed in the world of twitter in order to create little one-liners that encapsulate the moment. i don't know why doing all of this helps us solidify our individual identities. maybe it's easier to state five things i'm interested in and present myself that way. yes that's it. it's easier to present oneself in the way one desires. and we have control over the way we are presented to the world. i can edit this blog as much as i want. i can delete, re-write, add, do anything to this blog entry, and that is how the reader will see me. perhaps we all take pleasure in dictating how we are seen.

but it's not really like that in the end, is it?

others will see us the way they want to. and we will see others the way we want. regardless of what we choose to show, we know there is more to us than our 5 listed interests. and chances are, others probably do, too.

so what am i trying to get at? i don't even know, really. just that we are all looking for ourselves in one way or another. and it's not wrong to try to define ourselves through different means in the search for our true selves. it's easy to go astray, to get lost in the process, but if we keep in mind our true purpose then our cyber lives will not be lived in vain.