Social media gives you the option to create an entire persona different from the one lived in reality. When applied to social media, most people understand avatar to mean, “an icon or figure representing a particular person”; for example, a profile picture (Google Dictionary). But after class discussion, that definition seems extremely limiting to the word “avatar.” I believe avatar branches much farther. Your avatar is who you present to the world and the method you choose to present it. So, if you post on social media, no matter what the content of the posts are, those posts become you- at least to online viewers. Whether the person you create and project on social media be truly representative of who you are or not- that is your avatar. I think that is one of the greatest appeals of social media; you have the option to edit what parts of your life people see. Real life is often sloppy and upsetting, but it doesn’t have to appear so to onlookers thanks to social media. Social media does not guarantee that people will think about you the way you want them to, but it makes it easier to edge them toward seeing your imagined, ideal self- your avatar.
Sometimes my camera roll looks like this after a night out.
If I want to post one of these, I’m going to choose the best one. I’ll probably present myself like the perfect picture was taken on the first try, not like there were 50 other photos that I had to delete because they didn’t represent me in the way I wanted them to.
