All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
William Shakespeare
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), Goffman uses a theatre metaphor to explain how people present themselves in social interactions. He claims that individuals are the actors on a stage. They perform different roles in different settings to influence how others (the audience) perceive them. Impression management is deliberately choosing specific versions of oneself to meet certain social expectations. Goffman explains there are two stages, the Front and Back Stage.
Front Stage
- The Front Stage is where the “performance” takes place. Individuals act in a certain way that aligns with societal norms and conveys a specific image of themselves.
Back Stage
- The Back Stage is the “private” area, where people can stop acting and discard their roles. They can act in ways they would not in front of an audience.
For instance, a person might act kind and supportive in front of their boss (front stage) but complain about them privately (back stage).
Acting differently to one’s true nature can sometimes be difficult in real life – e.g., hiding disgust or annoyance on one’s face entirely is not always easy. In a Digital World, this is different. The way social media is built allows for a performative and fake version of someone’s reality to be shown. It is widely known that many influencers show ‘fake’ content to appear better. For example, they might create a “What I do in a day” video that is not accurate to their daily lives, thus leading people to believe they are someone they are not. Their act and presentation on social media, the Front Stage, differs from their authentic selves, their Back Stage.
This creation of a ‘persona’ on social media is quite common. However, another thing social media allows is creating an entirely different person to one’s actual self. Also known as catfishing, people can easily pretend to be anyone online. Create a new profile, use a fake name and birthdate, and upload false pictures -> done. Verification is rarely needed. With this ease, people pretend to be others online, and with this ease, they abuse it.
⚠️CONTENT WARNING⚠️
I will be mentioning topics about predatory behaviour and (sexual) child abuse.
Alexander McCartney made a false online identity as a young girl to abuse and take advantage of young girls. He pretended to be their age to gain their trust and pressure them into sending intimate pictures. Following that, he would blackmail them into sending him more, even forcing his victims to include their younger siblings in the abuse.
Through the creation of a false self, he managed to target up to 3.500 victims and put them through horrible mental and sexual abuse. He luckily was jailed with a life sentence and a minimum of 20 years. Yet many others of him exist.
Predators abuse the way social media allows them to effortlessly pretend to be someone else to commit horrific crimes. Many victims get hurt through this acting and hiding of their true selves. It is essential for everyone, especially children, to understand internet safety and not believe everything they see to be real, as both in the real and digital world, people put on an act for the audience.
Bibliography
Goffman, Erving. (1959) “The presentation of self in everyday life“. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Haziq, S. (2019) “Putting the best digital self forward in the age of Social Media”, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@haziqsabreen25/putting-the-best-digital-self-forward-in-the-age-of-social-media-d3dbec422b73 (Last accessed: 03.11.2024)
Unknown (2024) “Catfishing: Alexander McCartney jailed for minimum of 20 years.”, BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4d40922xvo (Last accessed: 03.11.2024)
I think the individual identity is quite important.
In this blog, the blogger shows us that impression management is divided into the front stage and the back stage, and the situation of people in the current society. In particular, she proposes that because of the prevalence of social media, people can now create roles on the Internet. In this way, some people can sit in the background of electronic devices, But pushing the persona that they created into the foreground of the Internet, and from blogs, we can see that this way has caused some very noteworthy negative effects, and even led to a lot of criminal behavior, so I think bloggers can focus more on individuals, social media and how society can avoid and restrain criminal behavior. To come up with ways to solve the problem. In general, this blog starts from the creation of social media and the dark side brought by the development of virtual identity. It reveals some criminal behaviors hidden in the shadow and reminds us all, so it is a very good blog！
The example of Alexander McCartney really highlights how dangerous this can be when people abuse the ability to “perform” online. I completely agree that understanding internet safety is crucial, especially for young people who might not recognize the signs of catfishing. It makes me wonder how we could better educate people about spotting fake profiles and staying safe online.