ENG G100 Identity - Grade: A PDF

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5 pages essay about Identity of people including analysis and examples such as “Facebook: Editing myself” essay by Mrigaa Sethi, an episode of the Black Mirror series - Be right back, second episode of Black Mirror, "White Bear"....

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Identity is shaped by personal choices The identity of a person is shaped by many aspects. However, The surrounding environment such as friends, family, neighborhood.. tends to play an important role in this. Out of all of those factors, friends and family are the most significant ones that affect a person’s personality such as taste in clothes, food, music or social activities. These are what create a person’s identity. Personal choices such as how we dress, how we act also affect our identities. However, there are things that we can not choose like our nationality, gender, ethnicity which also shape our identity. Thus, every decisions we make in life define ourselves. Everyone in this world has a different identity because they all make their own over the course of their life. The choices we make define ourselves, and those choices can affect our future. Someone's identity is a part of his/her being and may be acquired indirectly from friends, parents, surrounding environment, and other role models. Sometimes others react to us based on choices we make, which can affect our choices in the future. For example, When we first join social media, we select which parts of our identity to share with the society, but if we do not get the desired social response, which in this case is the small amount of "likes" and comments, we choose to adjust the information to share in the future. In this situation, by examining the thought processes of others who are negotiating identity online, students can better reflect on their own experiences and also make connections to the ways that they manage their identities in “real life”. Another example of identity is from “Facebook: Editing myself” essay by Mrigaa Sethi. The essay is about how people edit and cover themselves on social media. Sethi describes herself on Facebook as “often amused”, she is into “shaking her fist at the sky, creative and shameless lazing,...”. She also put up some personal information about herself such as her birthday, weight

which make her delete them after seeing someone know her from real life. She is an example of how people want others to view all the material they post but when someone they do not know or do not want to contact comes in their profile, they become skeptical. Social media is also not the place to share private information. However, Sethi enjoys updating certain sections of her profile regardless of her privacy. Sethi’s essay focuses on assumption three which identity is shaped by personal choices. “Online identity is an odd sort of shrine; It is not for a fixed deity but for a constantly changing self-representation, an incongruous self. Even if I had no regard for my privacy, maintaining an accurate and complete online representation of myself is impossible.” saying that keeping an image of "real self" online is not possible, there is no time or room for her to update everything on social media which states that her identity is not controllable (Sethi, 62). She learns a lesson about keeping with the surroundings or aspects of others in society when a large amount of her information are exposed to her student through social media. This supports the idea of how people’s identity are diluted and highly edited on social media. SnapChat is also another example where people capture their moments or update their status every second. For instance, my friend is one of those people who really obsessed with social media. He updates his posts on SnapChat every second which really bug me all the time when I am with him. He makes sure that people know what he is doing every minute and does not really care that it bothers the people around him. Maintaining a picture of himself on social media is what he loves to do but who he really is in real life is another thing. There are people who live most on social media and they tend to forget who they really are which is pretty common these days. It’s not bad to share the precious moments of life but sometimes it’s best to enjoy without the phones. In the first episode of the Black Mirror series - Be right back, Martha lives desperately after her boyfriend dies. Until she starts to interact with a synthetic recreation who looks and acts

just like her deceased boyfriend - Ash. It fills up her nostalgia about her lover at first, but eventually, it does not have enough of him. Moreover, Martha still suffers even when she is with someone who is just like Ash. The synthetic recreation looks nothing different from her boyfriend, but it is not him there who has been living and loving her. It is about the personality that Ash has, not just the outside look. For instance, I have a twin sister who looks just like me. We may have the same outer look but we are different in personality. People sometimes confuse us but they usually do not treat us the same way since they recognize our differences. Same as the synthetic recreation who imitates Ash's look. Although there is no difference in the appearance, the personality is what actually matters. Ash's outside identity can be copied but his inside self like things Ash usually say, do or talk is indeed hard to resemble. The identity is based on choices but the synthetic recreation does not know what to do or how to react to the situations the way Ash would if he were alive unless Martha tells him. Another example of this situation is Dadbot, a speaker that has a version of James’ father who passed away. James finds himself reaching for the phone to talk to his father after he dies, he makes Dadbot to fulfill his nostalgia about his father just like Martha does with Ash. When the Dadbot does not say “I love you” back to James when he says it to him, he was disappointed in it. Although it’s just a machine and it’s fake but that’s all he wanted to hear. He knows that he is talking to an identity that resemble his dad and depends on the program, but he decides to talk to it after all. Even though it’s just a cover for his pain and it is not bad as long as he feels comfortable with it. The second episode of Black Mirror, "White Bear", is about a woman named Victoria whose memories have been erased. She is tortured by the people around her because of what she has done in the past. Although the message is about how we should put ourselves in other people's shoes, what Victoria has done before may be wrong but she is never forced to live with

the guilt over time, instead of that she is expected to relive it repetitively. Even though she is a different person from who she is before but the crime that she has done is not forgiven. The movie also shows how twisted the mob mentality can be. Her identity after every time they erase her memories can be the same and they make her pay for what she has done at first, but with those lost memories she has no idea who and where she is. It is not the same person from whom she is before which makes no sense for her to be tortured all over again. In Batman & Identity: Crash Course Philosophy #18, Hank discusses about the identity of Batman. “Bruce Wayne is Batman but Batman is not Bruce Wayne” saying that the identity of a person can be changed based on the properties. While Batman is all about business, Bruce Wayne is about being a billionaire playboy. Although it is the same person but whenever Bruce puts on his mask, he is all about business and protecting the city. The difference in choices and properties between those two make different identity. Even if Batman’s son takes his role after his death, it still cannot be the same as the original Batman. Identity always continues to develop through a lifetime. Knowing one’s identity accurately increases self-esteem and reduces depression, anxiety. When people do what they think they should be doing, they are happy. Especially when society has a big impact on people’s lives, but it does not mean each individual should follow it. For me, the society has a limited impact on my lifestyle, mostly because I despise trends. Nobody can choose who to accompany themselves with, they are the only one can decide that. Just because we live in a certain area doesn’t mean we have to be the same as the people around us. Mainly these are personal choices because that is what we choose to do and how we want to be identified as a person....