After reading the Social Media chapter, the Rushkoff chapter on Identity and watching the documentary Life 2.0 (above), write a blog post about being in two places at once in the digital age. How has this “virtuality” changed our ideas of self, society and community? How might VR social media impact our embodied relationships? If you were going to design a VR social media platform what would it be like? What concerns and/or hopes do you have about the future of a virtual social life?
Depending on how much time, effort, and resources you put into “being two places” at once I think the effects can be quite disconnecting or leading to a polarization between the “real you” and “virtual you”. I only speak from experience of personal use and online presence when I say that I believe that VR platforms can be used for immense good but can also be a significant fork in the road when it comes to distraction and how we choose to pursue recreation in a healthy way. I think conflict of interests are in order that may drive certain people from real-life obligations and could potentially lead to full-fledged neglect in certain areas of your own life – that is to say that VR has big potential to for escapism of massive proportions that may lead some of us to divide ourselves from our real-life self, society, and community, just to pursue it online or in a VR world. This, factored in with how much more unappealing future Earth could potentially be due to climate change and a myriad of other reasons, would be a prime set up for overindulgence of time and resources towards setting a bigger foothold online for ourselves as opposed to taking care of what we have in the flesh.
The abovementioned ironically plays into how I would build a social media platform if I could. I would look to the example Ready Player One has provided and almost completely replicate the format of this book/movie. A moderately decentralized network or world where people can jump in and do pretty much anything they could imagine in a virtual setting. I feel like this format would be entirely conducive to all the anti-social aspects VR that I previously mentioned, but it’s a fantasy of mine, nonetheless.
As far as embodied relationships are concerned, it seems like a bit of a tricky play when it comes to its tie to VR and how we already carry ourselves online. If you are yourself online, you will make proper decisions with how you conduct yourself because it is your own reputation at stake. Avatars annihilate this idea and enable to act less like themselves or how they want to be perceived with little to no consequences. There is also margin for creating a version of yourself that is nothing like the real you, but if this relationship is for the sake of VR connections with no intent to expand past it then I suppose it would be suitable for people that are in mutual agreement.