Summary - The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self.

Title of article: The Dark Sides of Our Digital Self
Author: Steven Handel
Publisher: The Emotion Machine
Date published: September 2011

Theme: Digital Self
Stages of online life.

Key points of the text:


The author identifies several negative personality traits that tend to manifest in our e-personality or digital self:
- Delusions of Grandeur - To many, the internet holds great promises of freedom, wealth, power, and opportunity.
- Narcissism - Narcissism is a kind of excessive self-love, and another common byproduct of developing our e-personality or digital self.
- Aggression - This formation of a “digital self” often doesn’t just harm our own self-perception, but also the people we choose to treat while inhabiting this self.
- Impulsivity - The ease of accessibility – and “instant gratification”.
- Infantile Regression and the Tyranny of the Emoticon
- Love and Sex Recalibrated
- Illusion of Knowledge
- Internet Addiction



Key Quote 2-3:


“In fact, it can cause a kind of “digital divide” between our digital self, how we often think and behave online, and our offline self, how we often think and behave in face-to-face, “real world” interactions.”

“Aboujaoude shares a lot of compelling research inpsychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology that seems to indicate that in many ways the internet is a unique kind of environment that creates a very different kind of self-perception (one which can affect both our online and offline behavior).”

“Why be old, short, fat, and bald when you can create a young, tall, dark, handsome version of yourself in a virtual world, like in Second Life? And instead of having to find a real girlfriend, you can just create an avatar of your ideal girlfriend? Many people are becoming increasingly infatuated with the freedom and customization of virtual worlds, and they are willing to neglect their offline lives in order to dedicate more and more time to their fantasies.”