The Online Jodieann

Creating a online brand is almost like putting on a Halloween costume and becoming the person you’ve always aspired to be. Online sites afford many individuals a chance to escape their drab life and become their alter ego or a exaggerated person. This may be true for most people and myself as well. I am on several social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, OkCupid. With each social media sites there is a certain type of image one must uphold to be able to engage within that community. I portray myself online as a very well-put together individual who engages in thoughtful discussions regarding politics, current events, quotes, fun things that happen in my life aka shareable moments, rants, etc. My positioning online gives the impression, which is true, of a progressive, fashionable, savvy, and holistic thinker who likes coffee and inspirational quotes. In many ways I am proud of my digital story telling ability because I know I could represent various brands successfully and I will uphold the image of the brand. Also, I have started a lovely series which I call the Daily Takeaway, each day I write 3-5 inspirational quote or takeaway and use the hashtag #DayNumberoftheDay. It’s been pretty cool, I hope to look back 365 from now and have a transformative outlook on my growth as an individual. I’m not quite sure why I started the series but I love doing it.

Does your online identity convey to the audience your future goals and ambitions?

My online personality perfectly explain who I am and who I want and will become. I do a very good job of creating my personal online brand. I have realized that it is what you physically put online that gives people a certain impression of you. In a way you have to create the ideal persona that you want to sell to people— its sort of genius. I do think people realize that I am genuine online as I am in person.

Does it tell the audience what you do for a living or hope to do for a career?

Yes, in my blurb section I give a nod to my profession as a writer. If someone was to stalk my Twitter timeline and come across posts from 11 months ago they would find links to press release that I wrote on CUNY Newswire. I am very much professional online but I know that my idea of professional and someone else’s interpretation are very different.

What assumptions would someone make about your personality?

The “Online” Jodieann is just as lovely as she is in person. My online persona is the girl you could imagine sitting with in a coffee shop, engaging in conversations of all sorts. The persona is relatable in many ways, the candor, the wit, the easy going personality, the professionalism, graciousness. My online persona embodies all my real life traits online very pleasantly. One of the key takeaways I hope my persona conveys most of all is that Jodieann is an intelligent young woman with a strong voice and a clear mission of achieving all her goals.

To Delete or Not to Delete?

It never occurs to us that what we post online sort of remains there…forever? Seems quite dramatic to say that but it is actually not. The age of the internet so to speak has enabled us to recreate ourselves or in other words represent ourselves in the way we want to be seen. When we create an online profile we create a depiction on how we want to be seen: we primp, polish, include, and exclude things about ourselves to coin the identity we want to exude. We brand ourselves in this act. We create a persona or identity so to speak and do all we can to uphold that identity but what we engage or participate in, and these things that we do are always present and will remain a part of ourselves as trace.

Now, in understanding of the internet all that we create, share, and participate online has all contributed to the building of the internet itself. The conversations, both controversial and  agreement has led to the building of communities. Now as I said before, what we post online remains forever. These brands of who we are remain.  “In theory, the right to be forgotten addresses an urgent problem in the digital age: it is very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the cloud” (88, Rosen). Over the years people have been against this ‘ploy’ of the internet. It seems as though the only people who have this objection to the duration or longevity of a post are those who post something ridiculously embarrassing or controversial and after realize the effects it causes on either employment or their ‘identity’ so to speak.  People have brought to the table the idea that whatever is posted should have the ability to be deleted…forever.

The golden rule of the internet has and will always be, “if you do not want something seen do not post it”. A simple rule to follow, but however in this day in age everyone feels the need to generate conversation, participate online, and share, share, share! My point is that if there is a right to delete and by delete I mean to erase all trace, meaning all screenshots, shared, and bookmarks of that said image or video then there should be an understanding as to what uploading actually entails. When you post you are explicitly giving permission for people to share, ridicule, or praise. Now that post goes on to create conversation and users and composers go onto create new ideas from that said post. What we contribute to the internet has continued to create more content and stimulate the minds of others. If things had the right to be erased then all that surround them, incorporate them, justify them, and raise because of them would then too be erased. What we post has not only contributed to the branding of who we say to be but also the branding of others and the ideas of others.

As in Cohen and Kenny’s, “The Online Personal Brand” analyzes and synthesizes the ideas that inherently work together in order to create an identity. When I looked upon the social medias I had I realized that I had posted only what I wanted people to see. There were no embarrassing photos. I was polished. I represented myself in the best filter possible. The choice to share only certain things was both a constraint and affordance for me; it also created the opportunity for me to brand myself in such a way that either encourages curiosity or discourages it. The fact of the matter is that this all stems from a legal issue. Defamation of ones character as mentioned in the Carroll chapter is one of the underlining reasons as to why the issue for deletion of online publications has arisen. As we can agree certain issues arise when we post things but the question is under what guidelines or stipulations is it deletion necessary? Is it ever necessary to delete and if we ever delete what does this mean for the internet? Will the internet have less viable sources or ideas in circulation? Does the right to delete create more problems than it solves? 

Do Raceless Individuals Exist?

As many of you know or may not know, I was born in Jamaica— an island with an ancestry of both Taino and Africans. Before I migrated to America, I never labeled myself as black, non-white, non-hispanic because those terms did not exist in my vocabulary or culture– I was Jamaican and then I came here. For many immigrants there is a unwritten language that you have to know here without being directly told that the language even exist which is to categorize yourself. One of those subtle languages you are expected to know is the language and the history of race in America. Race in America is extremely sensitive, there is almost no way to desensitize the terrible implications of slavery.

First, I must say that as an outsider, it is unique paradigm to see, you are a part of it but in many ways your are not. There is the white world and the black world– no mater what country you are from you are forced to choose a category. I don’t make the rules, that just how it is in America. We are encouraged to create a three fold color scheme where white, black and shades of grey exist but the reality is the predispose and reinforced dichotomy only exist with two shades and the American media reinforces it every single second they have. And for any second you think that it does not exist then you are too naive or you have been privileged to have not seen the murky waters.

There are people who are forced to categorize, label or identify, whatever they are calling it now, as one or the other and then there are those who identify as raceless individuals. Not to discount their reasoning on identifying as a “raceless individual” because it’s quite a utopian view, however let me remind you that this is America we are talking about. You cannot afford to choose because the choosing has already been done for you, the choice has been made. In Lisa Lebduska article “Racist Visual Rhetoric and Images of Trayvon Martin” she toys with the idea “Whether we see, what we see, and how we see it is determined by tacit cultural conventions and regulations.” (1) The truth is or at least my truth is, you can’t change it because you can’t undo slavery, you can’t undo racial tension, the eyes can’t unsee it, you can’t rewrite the past and you can’t change the past. You can’t prevail in America as a raceless individual because it won’t allow you to, you have to choose black or white or by some chance you may be both but nonetheless you still have to choose. You are not afforded the luxury of not seeing color or any features that expose someones’ ancestry because the American conventional views does not allow it. The ways in which we see a person, and how we see them are influenced and will continue to be influenced by the traditional ways of thinking of the already established, non-changing paradigm of America.

 

So where do we go from here you may be asking and my answer is I don’t know.