In my contextual study Popular Culture in Everyday Lives we are doing a group project about Internet Culture and Social Media. The specific area that I am focussing on is this misrepresentation of individuals on social media. I am finding this so interesting because there are so many different examples of people getting caught out for false representation and claiming to be someone they aren’t. I feel like this is a huge issue in social media because people like to present themselves they want others to see them, rather then the person they really are. I can see this in two lights. Firstly, it lets you express a part of yourself in a way you want to be accepted, I don’t see what can be wrong with this if it isn’t harming or effecting anyone else but then there is the other side about lying about your identity and affecting other people by getting into relationships with them.

For example there was a girl called Lonelygirl15 who started a video blog in 2006 where she claimed to be an 16 year old American home schooled girl who struggled with the issues of religious parents. Audiences got so involved with her because they enjoyed her stories and she would interest them by posting things such as “I shouldn’t be posting this…” etc which evoked attention from other vloggers and audiences on the base of YouTube. What was found out was that she was actually a New Zealand actress who had made up this profile. To her this didn’t seem like a massive issue, but audiences felt they had created a personal relationship and empathised for her, but really none of it was true.

This is the part that I don’t understand, why would people want to create fake realtionship with someone and make someone else feel they have found a companion/ someone they can connect with when it is all fake. I am really excited to look more in depth into this and see the reasons behind why people do this and how they feel they need to be someone else in order to be accepted into society.