(Amarillo by Gorillaz, a song I was listening to while completing this assignment)
Upon telling the class about myself and later reflecting on the two pictures I had to represent myself with I realized that I lack pictures or videos or anything external relating to who I really am. I believe that there is a reason why everyone might have a hard time with that as well. No one is going to post media that says something about their dark side or secret desires and actions but will happily post picture after picture of them smiling, laughing, dancing, and being social. Because making sure people know that you’re happy and socially popular has become the ultimate prize in our society. At the same time, it could prove to be impossible to truly be able to represent ourselves solely through pictures an an avatar. I believe I am many things and an avatar may capture a single characteristic but it will never capture it all.
It was very interesting to see what pictures everyone had picked because those are the pictures they believed best represented themselves. But as the audience, we were able to decipher and pick out the similarities between the self-descriptions and differences. We truly got to see avatars of and compare their real-ness. To see whether they were just a facade or truly a representation.
Social Media avatars are important because it is our introduction to whoever s checking us out. We are not there to formally introduce ourselves and make a first impression but our avatars can. The problem arises when avatars become only but a depiction or even a completely different person than who we are.
