While I was in high school, I had an online journal that I wrote in and I also used the AOL Instant Messenger almost everyday. My journal was a public one for the most part; I would occasionally make my entries “Friends Only” so that my friends who also had online journals and who were connected to mine were the only people who could read my entries. The link to my journal was in my profile for the instant messenger so that anyone who I conversed with online through the messenger had the opportunity to click and read what I wrote. Most of my friends had the same online activities, and most used them more than I did; I really only did it for the most part so that I could be included and feel closer to them. We would all write entries about our daily angst or either exaggerate something good that happened to us, or chronicle our super awesome fun activities. But we all knew that anyone could read what we wrote if we made it public, and I personally had a sense of excitement from it sometimes. I also liked the idea of being able to be more “talkative” through my journal in order to maybe account for a lack in my personality at school. I wanted whoever was reading my journal to know that I was a thoughtful, intelligent, and fun person who would be someone to hang out with. So I adjusted the structuring of my sentences and chose words accordingly. It wasn’t strange to those friends who knew me and who read my journal because it was accepted (and unacknowledged); everyone presented themselves as more fascinating than they actually were. That really was the only reason why I had an online journal when I think about it in retrospect. Merchant recognizes this fact when he states, “In writing online, how we conceive of and respond to audience, and how we imagine our readership, is clearly of central importance” (240). I wanted those readers who happened to stumble upon my online journal to be intrigued and want to get to know me, or want to keep reading my journal secretly. I desired that sense of power that is felt when someone is intrigued by you, and the desire for this confidence was why I wrote to that specific audience of those I didn’t know, or those who were friends of friends and may find my journal through theirs. And it worked. I had different people who wanted to know me, or who wanted to know my online self which they assumed was how I was in reality. This is how I came to know my first boyfriend. He went to high school with me and found my journal through a friend’s and knew who I was peripherally. Apparently, he watched me and read my journal for two months before I was even made aware of his existence.

            At first I felt flattered in that I had achieved what I had intended (although I never realized or recognized my true motivation then). Then, as I got to know him better, I felt like I had to fulfill an expectation that didn’t exist because I wasn’t in actuality the fun, outgoing, witty person I presented as myself online. Aside from this example, I also had strange people contacting me online or finding me through friends’ journals, and after I ended up dating another guy my freshman year in college who I met through MySpace, the whole idea of a totally public online self weirded me out so much that I deleted everything.

            The thing that bothered me the most though about my experience was that everyone did the same thing as me and I knew they were doing it. I couldn’t understand how people could be so “fake,” but I realize now that those identities were a part of them and equally separated from them as much as was the case for me. I too found others’ journals through friends, stalking those occasionally who I was duped by and wanted to be friends with. I can remember one girl in particular who used to post short animations of pictures of herself on her journal, and talk about hanging out at the canal (I live right on the Erie Canal and the “cool” thing to do in high school was hang out on the trails by it and drink). She was friends with people I knew and went to my high school so I decided one day to leave a comment on her journal and say hi. We ended up becoming friends through instant messaging online but had never actually met in person, even though I bet we passed each other in the halls at least once a day. The situation is so strange to me now but that was normal to me then. I remember vividly meeting her in person for the first time after school once when she was hanging out with people we both knew. She wasn’t at all like how she presented herself online. She never smiled in her pictures and when she did in front of me, she had braces with a bad overbite, and she also had a really bad lazy eye, so that it distracted me when I looked at her.  Her hair looked different and her size wasn’t what I expected it to be. She wasn’t ugly by any means but she must’ve only posted pictures of herself that made her look more conventionally pretty than she actually was. I never posted pictures of myself publicly on my journal, but I did rely on how the overall look of my journal made me out to be. I wanted to be thought of as sophisticated and my journal was simplistic in design with a white background and gray type. I also had this picture on my main page, which was a Polaroid I took and manipulated the emulsion on: 

     The thought of having a public online self like that is so strange to me now, but I still do. I have a Facebook self but the only thing anyone who doesn’t know me can see is a small thumbnail of a picture of me. Even with that, I chose my picture considering how people would think of me when they saw it, and what conclusions they would draw in order to construct me.

            I was thinking of my history with online selves when Volkart was discussing the artists who participated in the double life exhibition. The idea of conversing with people who I’ve never met in person online is such a big part of how life was for me in high school, maybe because it was a time when it was just becoming popular, so the artists’ interactive online works are something that I can relate to. She writes, “Identification, and consequently a feeling of being moved and a sense of emotional intensity happen on the net primarily because of the fact that it is not possible to simply separate parts of bodily existence and transform them into a new identity, even if it seems that you can be someone entirely different there” (277 in reader). I presenting myself online as how I wanted to be, I then understood more about myself and was able to decided if whether or not I wanted to be the way I was presenting myself because people were reacting to the self firsthand. Those experiences I had were definitely emotional for me, and served as an outlet for the rollercoaster of emotions I was going through. The artists in the exhibition seem to really be speaking to the emotional intensity Volkart describes by locking into it and really making someone feel for someone who doesn’t actually exist physically in front of them. In particular the weblives that seem to fit this the best are the ones in which a single self is presented to the viewer: Milica Tomic, Linda Dement, Prema Murthy. I’m curious to know how someone who has never had a specific online identity (besides email) would react to these pieces. The artists must have had an audience in mind who had participated in online identification themselves.