The internet may be one of the most generous forms available for expressing and presenting identity. The internet is blind and users can create their own appearance. The internet cannot hear and so users can create their own voice. On the internet, users can construct their identity. Even identifiers such as community or history subside for a bit and new communities, new histories are constructed.
My original idea for the Who R U? project was to construct a single personality and to present the personality and Prezi using g-chat in an effort to reiterate how an online identity can be so easily constructed. In exploring this idea a little further I begin to feel that the internet allows for construction of exaggerated or false identities as much as it does for revealing what an individual may feel is a truer identity. Blogs and Youtube comments often offer really unfiltered thoughts that aren't said in real life. An amount of ambiguity or lack of responsibility allows for many different kinds of expression. Similarly an amount of publicity can be a free and democratic space in which musicians can post their songs without a record label, artists can display their work without the help of a gallery.
I chose to focus this project on Craigslist Wanted Ads for Dating. I think they present a place in which profiles are constructed and revealing. They are beautiful in that they not only seek to articulate a true-ish identity of the writer, but also seek to articulate a true-ish version of what the writer hopes to find out in the world.
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