Social Media Characters

As Andy Oram pointed out in a series of posts for O’Reilly Radar, our identities are being digitized and this presents some interesting opportunities. Either way it’s likely of be a part of life going forward.

This series has explored what identity means in an online medium, the most salient aspect of which is the digitization of information. Consider what the word digitization denotes: the fragmentation of a whole into infinitesimal, fungible, individually uncommunicative pieces. The computer digitizes everything we post about ourselves not only literally (by storing information in computer-readable formats) but metaphorically, as the computer scatters our information into a meaningless diaspora of data fields, status updates, snapshots, and moments caught on camera or in audio–as Shakespeare might say, signifying nothing.

Oram goes on to explain that only humans are able to combine all these bits into something.

No computer–only a person–can reassemble and breath life into these dry bones, creating from them a narrative.

Building a narrative for yourself can be very helpful in the modern world. But it isn’t exactly entertaining. Having once had the auspicious title of Social Media Strategist at Experian, I noticed the same thing as Oram, but saw the potential for virtual characters. Identities or characters built up for the sole reason of entertainment. Just look at how entertaining fake michael_bay is.

A lot of social media is fake today

We already know that most celebrity profiles are powered by assistants and how real are company accounts powered by PR? Add to that the number of profiles that are more caricature than reality.

There’s also many characters already garnering quite a following. There’s Rorschach, Mr. Spock, and many many more.

A lot more social media will be fake in the future

Of course fake social media profiles can be used for spam and more nefarious reasons. Spammers are always looking to exploit new communication tools and especially when users are so click prone as they seem to be on Twitter and the like. Dell made $6.5 million on Twitter alone, there is a lot of money to be made out there.

It isn’t too difficult to see a day in the not too distant future where a good percentage of social media profiles are fake for the purpose of spam, PR, and entertainment with the creation of characters. With all the information dgitized it will be difficult to know just who is real and who isn’t.