In class today we were asked the following questions:

What does anonymity mean to you?
Think about the different types of social medias you use – do you talk to different people on each media?
And how do you represent yourself in each one? Are you different on them compared to how you are in real life?

Everyone has a sense of anonymity whether it be in the online world or in real life. You cannot say you have no anonymity whatsoever – it all depends on the degree of anonymity (this word is so hard to type) you decide to have. And it can be different for each person, taking celebrities as an example, who do not have as much anonymity (as some may like) and it is never one-hundred percent up to them how much they can keep private or how much is shared for the public eye.

Facebook and Instagram are the two social media platforms I use the most.
I use Facebook mostly to talk to my friends and have the occasional scroll through the newsfeed (though this does not interest me as much anymore). I do not upload many photos or post any statuses on this website either – most of the photos I have on my profile are ones my friends have uploaded and I have been tagged in.

Instagram on the other hand is something I have much more control over. Unlike Facebook, where you easily befriend someone you met once at a party, a friend of a friend who you think you may know, or people you’ve had on there for years just because, I am much more particular on Instagram. I follow accounts with photos that interest me (which mainly consist of high quality photos of New York City, architecture in Amsterdam, the streets of London, people living on the other side of the world I like and of course, fashion accounts (both men and women’s) that I like the “looks” of. And with the photos I choose to upload on Instagram, I am also quite picky with them. I don’t post a photo unless it is something that jumps out of my camera roll screaming to be uploaded.

I can easily say that I represent myself on Facebook and Instagram the same way as how I represent myself in real life and I would say that about most of my friends aswell – well on Facebook anyway, because 95% of the people I follow on Instagram, I do not know in real life.