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Sunday 30 June 2013

Our Societal Expectations of People's Online Behaviour Should Become More Realistic

Our Societal Expectations of People's Online Behaviour Need a Reality Check! 

For modern people their online life is almost as ever-present and constant as their physical life, yet while people are understood and accepted to sometimes tan in a bikini and wear beautiful lingerie, as well as party and relax with a beer in their material life, they are expected to portray themselves as forever-professionally-dressed-and-walking-only-in-a-straight line when it comes to their virtual, online presence.
Is this fair? Is this realistic? Is it robbing the person of his and her basic freedom to be oneself and of sharing this unique self openly with the world, without the constant fear of consequences "down the road"?  
Consider this, for example: Probably every young woman knows that there are a number of articles online with titles such as "How sexy photos can ruin your career", "How sexy photos online can cost you your job!" It is ridiculous how in this day and age young women are still judged for the simple fact that some of them decide to celebrate and preserve this temporary quality of youth and beauty in the form of a photoshoot. Young people, mostly women, end up being punished for having made aesthetic, beautiful photos in lingerie or in a bikini for the rest of their life. In fact, these consequences end up being longer-lasting than those of committing a real crime. Yes, that's right! If you have committed a crime you may have a non-conviction record that disappears automatically after two years, and no one sees that you ever had problems with the law, or, if you committed multiple crimes, or a very serious one, and get a criminal conviction, you can still expunge it after seven years, so that no one sees it from then on. On the other hand, if you create beautiful photos in lingerie in a photoshoot and then people appreciate and share these photos, they will be online forever and many people will judge you, despite the fact that these photos tell nothing about you as a person except, perhaps, that your are creative and confident. And, closer to the topic of sexuality, if a woman, for example is a stripper, and so she actually exchanges sexual services for money, no one will know ever that, because people are not allowed to take photos of such workers in strip clubs. Same idea with real prostitution, there is no way to know. But if you have been confident enough to take and share some aesthetic, artistic photos of yourself at any point in your life, and the photos turned out lovely enough for others to re-post and share these, you are supposed to have to "pay the price" for the rest of your life, as if for committing some despicable and unpardonable evil act. There are a number of articles online with titles such as "How your sexy photos can hurt your job prospects". 
Quite frankly though, in this modern day and age in which people practically live the virtual, online life as much as they live the physical, material one, the idea that one should only ever post certain photos, and not any others, sounds like severe restriction of freedom to be oneself and constant surveillance. This idea that only certain, staged and superficial photos and rehearsed official-sounding posts should be expected of a real, living human on his personal social-media accounts would have been relevant if people took photos in the same way that they did a few decades ago (i.e. only on very special occasions) before the age of social media and phones in everyone's pockets, the phones which have both a built-in digital camera and an online access to social all media accounts, so that the pictures taken with the latter could be immediately posted to the former. Given the way that social media is used now, being an ever-present and inseparable part of life, the expectation that people should constantly survey and scrutinize everything before they post it to make sure they are seen only in a certain light translates into a severe restriction of freedom to be oneself and to lead a normal, free, natural life. Instead, as a result of the outdated and unrealistic views on and expectations of one's virtual, online part of life, one is constantly forced to self-restrict and analyze and impression-manage, so that any normal real human who has one's own unique opinions, who relaxes with a beer, and tans in a bikini, and parties sometimes, when it comes to social media, ideally projects an image of an ever-working robot who never even takes off their business suite and always says "the right things" in the most official-sounding manner, with all the commas in place. Everyone is a human, and it is time to understand that the only difference between those who openly share a number of things, including some occasional lingerie photos and sometimes some strong, passionate opinions and those who look staged and "proper" in their limited staged photos, and have just a few meaningless reposts,  on their wall, is that the first type of person is open and confident and gives you a chance to glimpse their inner world as it is, while another type is extremely secretive, they are evidently flawed as all humans are, but their flaws will be totally unexpected, and even shocking (especially compared to the perfect staged facade) as the flaws of such secretive people cannot even be inferred at all, so with them one does not at all know what they are getting themselves into (as an employer of these people for example). So it is time to re-evaluate our attitudes and expectations in light of modern, digital ever-connected reality!