I recently had dinner with some friends of a friend. I’d never met any of the women before, but I felt as though we’d known each other for years. We knew each other’s professions, relationship status, favorite movie, favorite music and favorite quotes. We even knew what one woman had eaten for lunch that day.
Though we’d never physically seen each other before, we recognized each other’s faces. One woman said to me, “Wow, you look great outside of your two-inch profile box!”
In that moment it hit me: “I am my Facebook profile!”
Where had my anonymity gone? What happened to my sense of self? Who am I to the world? Where did my truth go?
And who the hell is the “me” they think they know? Do they know that I sometimes forget to brush my teeth?
Or that I don’t have a TV?
Or that I sometimes eat kale chips for dinner?
These few facts might be all I have left of the “me” that was once all mine.
This got me thinking. Who is this “me” anyway? Who is anyone, for that matter? We’ve chosen to perceive others and ourselves as these manufactured icons on a screen that announces to the world what we just ate for lunch!
If perception creates reality, what would happen if the internet crashed and I lost my Facebook profile? Then who would I be?
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