Calling Neurotic Extroverts And New Authors Open to Experience Online!
Hey you, Social Media user! Are you an extrovert? neurotic? open to experience, or maybe you’re a mix of these - a neurotic extrovert open to experience, perhaps? Admit it, how many thrill at the thought of being secretly watched by an audience of unknown eyes, as you reveal ‘what’s on your mind’? How many just want to be ‘liked’ as we identify our selves with the digital symbols of our posts? How many identify ourselves as author of our texts? According to recent research from the University of Texas there are three main personality traits leading ever increasing numbers to engage in social media use: extroversion, “high levels of neuroticism”, and openness to experience. The desire for anonymity that once was a dominant behavior trait of people who went online has been fast replaced by more overtly social, narcissistic, open and self-identified behaviours, as millions take to the web worldwide, according to a research article by Teresa Correa, Amber Willard Hinsley and Homero Gil de Zuniga,‘Who interacts on the web?: The intersection of users’ personality and social media use' published in Computers in Human Behaviour, in 2010.
Of course as Yours Truly’s ever increasing circle of FB friends may (or may not) agree, she says narcissistically to her Self and unknown digital Others, I use social media because I am open to experience and most definitely not because I am a neurotic exhibitionist!! Check out my new Blog - a reflexive, if rather obviously sign-posted, experiment in taking flight in digital writing!! Let’s move on...
What is also interesting to consider is how the medium of digital media and computer use shapes the content of users’ posts - a new form of digital dissociation, and how we embody our desires through multi-modal images and sounds to ground our experiences in sensation and define our identities to our digital communities, or audiences.
After the Death of the Author, comes the rebirth of millions of authors in virtual reality...
© Ruth Skilbeck, 2011
2 comments:
The rebirth of millions of authors in virtual reality! I would like to believe this is part of the rebirth of Anarchism or we could call it the rebirth of radical openess. Perhaps anarchism with a cross through it - a trick of the pen - button - but nonetheless a practice of DIY, what the current vernacular calls participatory or user generated content. The medium and the message - digital dissociation - are we spinning out of control while we sit with our machines? Or are we emerging into decentered practices - an emergence towards the unseen, the uncanny a mutubale and strange collective of flight from domination?
Will it be either-or or both? wo-man/machine? and is humanity really evolving beyond questions of how much control we have over our machines (the sheer unreliability of computer technology suggests otherwise!)?? It’s a very good question, Karen, thanks for picking it up. I will write a response to this in my next blog entry.
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