Digital Exhibitionism Response- Fallon Wilson

Digital Exhibitionism: The Age of Exposure by Ana María Munar states, “[s]ocial media allow for the digitalisation of creative texts (visual, narrative or audio) that were previously produced and consumed using other technological tools with a lower diffusion capacity,” providing “…a new scene for the self-making of personal biographies.” While this may seem like a positive improvement, it also leads to a few problems as well. 

First, because the sharing of such information has become so simple, it has also led to the degradation of self documentation. Facebook and Twitter are notorious for statuses and posts that share trivial bits about a person’s day or life, blurring the lines between “document[ation] of a person’s biographical record and daily life banalities.” At the same time though, despite the build up of unnecessary day-to-day information, there is a semi-permanence and security felt when saving data to the web that did not exist with paper and pen. There is no threat of fire, flood, or other physical destruction that threatens hand written journals, photo albums and other methods of material documentation.

Another problem that arises in the development of a virtual personal biography through social networking is that people are constantly comparing themselves to their peers. This tendency skews documentation because one feel the pressure to make their life seem more exciting or successful than it actually is. “Users of social networks are becoming increasingly conscious about the image they want to project and the use they want to make of that image. The profile pages of Facebook and the updates on Twitter are virtual blocks of a personal brand.” Some even go as far as creating alternate realities for themselves online. Shows, such as “Catfish” on MTV, arrange for couples that met online to actually meet in person, often exposing that at least one of the people involved is not at all who they said they were. The anonymity that comes with a digital age is as dangerous as it is an improvement in our society.