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gaudiorSo, some time ago, I attended a Continuing Education lecture for therapists about the impact of "technology" (i.e., cell-phones and the internet) on therapeutic practice. The most useful thing I got out of it was the concept of "digital immigrants" (people who grew up before use of computers etc. was widespread) and "digital natives" (people who grew up using computers etc.) (As coined by Marc Prensky in his 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants). The most interesting thing after that was to watch the roomful of therapists, where all the digital immigrants were saying "OMG TECHNOLOGY IS DESTROYING EVERYTHING HOW CAN WE STOP THIS MENACE?!?!?!?" and all the digital natives were saying, "so, what's the best way to deal with this dilemma that's come up due to my clients texting me?"
I enjoyed the lecture and discussion, but I also spent most of it lost in thought. So, I thought, technology is affecting us. We should bloody well update our theories to describe it, shouldn't we?
And what formed was, I think, a description of the stages of one common path of how senses of self, other, and identity develop online. What do you all think?
Phase 1. Wide-open When I first got online-- the very early livejournal entries, circa 2002-- there was this intoxicating sense of being able to say whatever I wanted. After all, it wasn't like an in-person conversation-- if people were bored or uncomfortable with what I was saying, they didn't have to read it! So I talked very happily and openly (friends-lock? What is that?) about my sex life and my psychology and references that most of my readers wouldn't get. I joined online forums and dating sites, and didn't worry about which name I used where. I spilled whatever I was thinking onto my journal, and if I thought at all about how other people were reacting, it was with a combination of cheerful exhibitionism and "well, I don't care what other people think!"
Phase 2. Oh shit, it's Mom! This was when I realized the truth of my wife's very wise adage: what happens on the internet happens in real life. People who read my journal started wanting to get into conversations with me about what I wrote. And not just text-based conversations-- face-to-face ones, where I stammered and blushed and couldn't figure out where to look when a distant acquaintance mentioned something about my sex life that I'd so blithely essayed about online. It's one thing to say that you don't care what other people think, but the fact is, when you say something to someone, that becomes part of your relationship with them. It changes how you know each other, it changes how comfortable you'll feel around them, it changes how much you trust them. Telling someone something personal means that you're trusting them not to hurt you with that information in the future-- not to take advantage of your vulnerability, not to make fun of your oddities, not to reject you for your confessions. When you do that deliberately with someone, it draws the two of you closer when they show themselves worthy of their trust. But when you do it without thinking, sometimes it means that they know more about you do than you know about them, and that new power differential can feel really uncomfortable for both of you. So after a while, I sort of started to realize how much I'd been exposing myself, and how that could be a problem. And I went, "gak!"
Phase 3. Lock-down Immediately after Phase 2; trying desperately to put the genie back in the bottle. I friends-locked my entire journal, I started using filters so as to only have conversations with some people. I worked hard on separating my username from my real name(s), and tried hard to make sure that only one of my real last names ever appeared in a fandom context, only the other of my real last names ever appeared in a professional/academic/psychological context, and my real hyphenated last name appeared basically nowhere ever except maybe legal documents. I got super-careful with "reply-all" on emails, and I tried to erase and compartmentalize my online identity as much as humanly possible.
Phase 4. Integration So, I'm not all the way here yet. I'm not sure everyone does get here-- I know people who are permanently in Lock-down and see no real reason to ever go further. But I think that Integration could be a really wonderful way to feel and live. Basically, it's an awareness and acceptance of two facts. One is that you are talking to specific people when you say things on the internet. When you post publicly, you're talking to everyone you've ever met (and many people you haven't), but all of those are still very specific people, with each of whom you have a specific relationship. So when you want to pick a certain person or group of people you want to say something to, you use filters/email/friendslock advisedly. You don't, say, yell at someone you're angry with in public, because you know that you're not just saying to that person "you suck," you're saying to everyone else you've (n)ever met, "hey, come be part of our argument! Whether you want to or not!" and you know that people like, say, that person's sister might feel uncomfortable about that. So you email the person privately (or text, call, or talk in person) instead. If you post publicly, you think about everyone in the world (you may have a few shorthand people for this, e.g.: your best friend, your great-aunt, your future boss, and Emma Thompson) and make sure you're comfortable with them knowing this.
Because that's the other, and really cool, part of integration. When you've achieved this stage, you will be able to-- perhaps even, comfortably-- acknowledge any aspect of your life which you've written about online in any context. If there are secrets that you only want to keep to yourself or a few very well-chosen people, those are private, yours, and you don't put them online. But the vast majority of things in your life you probably do write about online, and with those, you have to be unashamed enough of them to be okay with them coming up in all contexts. Even with friendslock, I assume that anything I write online could end up hacked, copy-pasted, or glitched into public... and I'm gradually becoming okay with that. It doesn't mean I want to talk to everyone about everything-- I'm not, for example, going to go on at length to my therapy clients about my views on the latest anime, because that's not what they're seeing me for. But the important thing about this phase is that if my clients happen to have Googled me, and found, say, videos of my performing in concert, I'm ready to talk about that. Mostly about how they feel about it, and what the impact of it was on them, and what the way we're talking about it says about how they approach relationships, and how that relates to what they're seeing me for. But I'm not going to be shocked that they saw it, or assume that it's a huge problem. I put it out there; that is me, and even if it's not an aspect of me they usually interact with, it's still present, in the background, in our interactions. So why not own it?
Easier said than done. But worth trying for, I think.
--R
I enjoyed the lecture and discussion, but I also spent most of it lost in thought. So, I thought, technology is affecting us. We should bloody well update our theories to describe it, shouldn't we?
And what formed was, I think, a description of the stages of one common path of how senses of self, other, and identity develop online. What do you all think?
Phase 1. Wide-open When I first got online-- the very early livejournal entries, circa 2002-- there was this intoxicating sense of being able to say whatever I wanted. After all, it wasn't like an in-person conversation-- if people were bored or uncomfortable with what I was saying, they didn't have to read it! So I talked very happily and openly (friends-lock? What is that?) about my sex life and my psychology and references that most of my readers wouldn't get. I joined online forums and dating sites, and didn't worry about which name I used where. I spilled whatever I was thinking onto my journal, and if I thought at all about how other people were reacting, it was with a combination of cheerful exhibitionism and "well, I don't care what other people think!"
Phase 2. Oh shit, it's Mom! This was when I realized the truth of my wife's very wise adage: what happens on the internet happens in real life. People who read my journal started wanting to get into conversations with me about what I wrote. And not just text-based conversations-- face-to-face ones, where I stammered and blushed and couldn't figure out where to look when a distant acquaintance mentioned something about my sex life that I'd so blithely essayed about online. It's one thing to say that you don't care what other people think, but the fact is, when you say something to someone, that becomes part of your relationship with them. It changes how you know each other, it changes how comfortable you'll feel around them, it changes how much you trust them. Telling someone something personal means that you're trusting them not to hurt you with that information in the future-- not to take advantage of your vulnerability, not to make fun of your oddities, not to reject you for your confessions. When you do that deliberately with someone, it draws the two of you closer when they show themselves worthy of their trust. But when you do it without thinking, sometimes it means that they know more about you do than you know about them, and that new power differential can feel really uncomfortable for both of you. So after a while, I sort of started to realize how much I'd been exposing myself, and how that could be a problem. And I went, "gak!"
Phase 3. Lock-down Immediately after Phase 2; trying desperately to put the genie back in the bottle. I friends-locked my entire journal, I started using filters so as to only have conversations with some people. I worked hard on separating my username from my real name(s), and tried hard to make sure that only one of my real last names ever appeared in a fandom context, only the other of my real last names ever appeared in a professional/academic/psychological context, and my real hyphenated last name appeared basically nowhere ever except maybe legal documents. I got super-careful with "reply-all" on emails, and I tried to erase and compartmentalize my online identity as much as humanly possible.
Phase 4. Integration So, I'm not all the way here yet. I'm not sure everyone does get here-- I know people who are permanently in Lock-down and see no real reason to ever go further. But I think that Integration could be a really wonderful way to feel and live. Basically, it's an awareness and acceptance of two facts. One is that you are talking to specific people when you say things on the internet. When you post publicly, you're talking to everyone you've ever met (and many people you haven't), but all of those are still very specific people, with each of whom you have a specific relationship. So when you want to pick a certain person or group of people you want to say something to, you use filters/email/friendslock advisedly. You don't, say, yell at someone you're angry with in public, because you know that you're not just saying to that person "you suck," you're saying to everyone else you've (n)ever met, "hey, come be part of our argument! Whether you want to or not!" and you know that people like, say, that person's sister might feel uncomfortable about that. So you email the person privately (or text, call, or talk in person) instead. If you post publicly, you think about everyone in the world (you may have a few shorthand people for this, e.g.: your best friend, your great-aunt, your future boss, and Emma Thompson) and make sure you're comfortable with them knowing this.
Because that's the other, and really cool, part of integration. When you've achieved this stage, you will be able to-- perhaps even, comfortably-- acknowledge any aspect of your life which you've written about online in any context. If there are secrets that you only want to keep to yourself or a few very well-chosen people, those are private, yours, and you don't put them online. But the vast majority of things in your life you probably do write about online, and with those, you have to be unashamed enough of them to be okay with them coming up in all contexts. Even with friendslock, I assume that anything I write online could end up hacked, copy-pasted, or glitched into public... and I'm gradually becoming okay with that. It doesn't mean I want to talk to everyone about everything-- I'm not, for example, going to go on at length to my therapy clients about my views on the latest anime, because that's not what they're seeing me for. But the important thing about this phase is that if my clients happen to have Googled me, and found, say, videos of my performing in concert, I'm ready to talk about that. Mostly about how they feel about it, and what the impact of it was on them, and what the way we're talking about it says about how they approach relationships, and how that relates to what they're seeing me for. But I'm not going to be shocked that they saw it, or assume that it's a huge problem. I put it out there; that is me, and even if it's not an aspect of me they usually interact with, it's still present, in the background, in our interactions. So why not own it?
Easier said than done. But worth trying for, I think.
--R
(no subject)
Date: 2014-01-09 08:37 pm (UTC)I see many of the same stages in other facets of my life--queerness, poly relationships, etc. So glad I feel finally integrated with most things. Feel like my internet and my RL life paralleled each otherr re:integration-stages most of the way though, which is an interesting emotional observation IMO and one I hadn't seen or made before. Thanks!