As I was sitting in my parlor drinking an old fashion and smoking lucky strip, I tuned into my favorite TV program Mad Men. I watched the main character, the dreamy Donald Draper, struggle with his secret past. His secret was that he was born under the name Dick Whitman. Son of a poor farmer, and a prostitute his life was far from the life he lives now. He created an alternative persona to escape his troubling past to become one of the most creative people in advertising.
In the 60’s, changing ones identity was a challenging process. His past finally caught up with him and destroyed the life he had tried so hard to perfect. But in the 21st century, creating a new identify is as easy as a click of a mouse. Not only is it easy to create but even easier to hind behind. Stuart Hall states “The old identities which stabilized the social world for so long are in decline, giving rise to new identities and fragmenting the modern individual as a uniļ¬ed subject.” Like Don Draper more people are trying to create a second life for themselves through the Internet.
Unlike Don Draper, I don’t want to change my identity. However avatars and Internet personalities are an outlet for people to present a better self, one that can say what is on their mind and have a captive audience of followers from around the world. Those who need an escape from their present selves finds the Internet an inviting place to become the person they wish to be. Don Draper couldn’t be Dick Whitman at home and Don Draper in the office. The invention of the Internet has allowed people to do just that. When given the task to create an avatar I didn’t wish to create an improved version of myself , but to stay try to who I am.
When I was in the process of finding a website to use to create an avatar I was very surprised to find thousands of sites willing to recreate people online. I tried one site where you uploaded your picture and it created an avatar that would speak and look exctually like you. (http://www.sitepal.com/) The site took the picture you uploaded and placed the image in front of an office background. I got halfway through the process of creating my avatar and got to freaked out to continue. My avatar was able to move its mouth and say rehearsed information about the site. This first experience with an avatar site made me feel like I was creating an exact digital version of myself. It was a bit disturbing to watch, which lead me to try to find a site that made a more lighthearted avatar.
For my second attempt I went for a site that reflected my interest in advertising. I ended up using the avatar program Mad Men. (http://www.amctv.com/originals/madmen/madmenyourself/) On this website I was allowed to create my on image. I could select my own skin color, body type, bone structure, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, nose, hair color, hairstyle, clothing, accessories, and even the background. The website allowed me to pick and choose which look I thought resembled me. As I was picking each element of my avatar I realized I was no longer picking parts that looked like me but was picking parts that I liked the best. I can see how easy it is to try to fix the characteristics you don’t like about yourself in real life in your avatar. When body parts are generalized and simplified it’s easy to come out of the site with a product that looks very generic and nothing like the person it’s suppose to represent. This Mad Men avatar was a lot more fun and way less scary then the first site I visited.
The first avatar differed from the Mad Men avatar by being increasingly weirder. The first site was too realistic and space age. The Mad Men avatar felt like I was creating a silly cartoon character of myself, which was far less intimidating. Both avatars don’t reflect who I really am. If someone visited my blog and say my avatar, they would have a very inaccurate idea of what I look like in real life. Like Don Draper, my avatar is nothing more then a mask of my true self.
No comments:
Post a Comment