My Online Identities

I would say that I have 6 total online identities. I am counting my facebook profile as two because I have different levels of privacy settings for my friends vs. say my parents. Then I have four blogs, one is sort of like a personal diary that I only share with a couple of close friends, one is public on tumblr.com that I use to post images, articles, videos, music, or thoughts that I find interesting and want to come back to later and share with others. Then I have two blogs with more specific purposes, one is for this class and the other is to document my time in Hong Kong. For my Hong Kong blog I have to be very conscious of what side of my identity I show since some of the kids who I babysit for read it. At the same time, I like to post some content that readers like my parents or family friends would be interested in so it's a mix of things that I try to make appropriate for and interesting to all audiences. One benefit is the fact that online identities allow for this type of control. Each one of my online identities represents a different aspect of the full picture that is only seen when interacting with me in real life. The other side of this though presents a risk of online identities: the fact that this sort of constructed facade can be shattered as other sides of your identity might leak through in ways that you don't want. Also sometimes I think that people express aspects of themselves online that they don't want to leak out into real life which could lead to trouble.