http://www.datamanager.it/news/social-network/jack-sparrow-and-web-between-anonymity-and-reality-because-one-life-not-enoughBy Lucia Montauti and Filippo Tognola
Once we used to use mIRC or discussion
forums: anonymous environments, where the alias could be the complete
opposite of the reality. Today with social network sites, such as
FaceBook, fantasy and reality are merging and we have new frontiers
opened by social geo-locaters which are entering deeper into the privacy
of users.
It is a “Big Brother” trend
where you can intercept tastes, movements, interests, combining personal
and professional life, celebrity and private life, reality and fiction.
To create a false identity responds to
the need for anonymity that FaceBook initially removed. This need has
existed within each user since the very arrival of the Internet. The
surprising thing is that it is forbidden, as it is also forbidden to
register a business as a regular user instead of creating a fan page or a
group, and none of this is in any way blocked. Reports of misuse have
no effect and as a result FaceBook is full of frauds.
It should become more secure, while
maintaining a high level of privacy with continuous supervision, but
this would not satisfy the users’ need to be free to express themselves
and play.
The “game”, the role-play, the
escapism drives up user numbers, so many real users have more profiles,
more "lives" we might say, with similar or opposite characteristics but
in different “choreographies”.
But, all this role-play isn’t this what
kids do? If it is natural and fun, how can it be wrong? If the need is
so widespread how can it be a mistake?
Fiction, in part or in whole, in good or
bad faith, is maybe even sometimes better than reality, or perhaps just
different and it is something that occurs in real life, whatever “real
life” means today.
The role-play game that we live at work
or in the family is transferred to the Net, where it can, in fact, be
expressed to an even greater extent.
This need corresponds to what we
actually live in reality and so there is no more fiction on the Net than
there is in everyday life, during a meeting, in forced greetings or
during a family lunch.
However, behind pictures and words one’s
true nature expresses itself, whatever we do on the Web is only what we
do on real life: for example, if we pretend on the Web we likely
pretend in real life, if we communicate poorly or well on the Web we
likely do the same in real life.
We can create a false identity, but we
cannot be who we aren’t, we can try to pass ourselves off as VIPs but we
can’t change the way we communicate.
On the Internet the character emerges
more than in real life because with no physical presence there are no
preconceptions, no apologies to make for what or who we are. The Net
doesn’t forgive.
A healthy escape from reality, that
sometimes becomes too suffocating, to become a fictional character for a
few minutes a day, to quote the sentences of a film and share the
enthusiasm, and then become another thing a moment later occurs because
the Net is a network of chameleons , so many people following group
interests and dreams, sharing them and then going off to imagine
another.
Everyday life limits creativity so we
see, with increasing velocity, the rise of dozens of Jack Sparrows:
people who dress as a pirate interpreting and expanding upon the big
screen characters, underlining its success. These people are the new
visionaries, writers of new screenplays, small and new worlds where Jack
actually lives.
The Cinema, the Net, Real life,
as we have understood “Real Life” until recently, are merging into
something unique and many of these Jacks, many profiles, are actors and
authors who bring the big screen on the Web and make it come to life.
One life is not enough; once, writers
drinking absinthe created and "saw / interpreted" the characters of
their books, they entered their work, living more than one life. Today
the Net allows many more people in much less time to dream and create
and dream again, not in monologue but interacting with others.
The Great Conversation brings magic to life, “bit magic” that takes us to enchanted places. It is important not to forget daily life and, indeed, enrich it with everything we have created with new thoughts and words.
Along with Jack, hundreds of people
"live" double and triple lives, fall in love on the Net and dream,
starring in their own new stories together.
So thanks to all the Jacks who live him
in their own way, who give something of themselves as they act out the
part, thanks to the characters who tell us about themselves but leave
the door open to personal interpretation, thereby creating a shared life
in which everyone can add to it or modify it.
And thanks to the Black Pearl and a compass that doesn’t point north: the
means to sail. Means that are eternally “courted”, because sometimes
you can lose the Black Pearl (life) and then you regain it, and therein
lies its true value.
This will be, is already, the
new way of publishing, fragmented on the Net, accessible anytime and
anywhere, made up of the thoughts and words of many people.
Our attachment to a concrete reality is
healthy when it allows us to be consistent with ourselves and make the
most of what we're capable of, but for many people this is difficult to
reach and, fundamentally emotions are Life, enabling us to live a dream,
they are our lifeblood.
Being linked to consumerism and
role-play is nothing more than an attempt to escape, to be real is to be
able to try to achieve something with the resources we have. The Net
has “caught” us because it crystallizes the strong need that many
people have to live detached from substitute emotions, the need to
switch off a bit from things, from roles, from the “detail” of a life
sometimes too "rational" and barely "felt" ... like drifting slowly away
from the shore.
Apart from extreme cases of those
swallowed by the Net, we are more than the sum of only one life and the
need to express it is far-reaching, being in touch with our dreams is
important, we have ignored it for too long choked by neck-ties and
trapped in shops, closed in roles and expectations.
Real life is the goal that many are
trying to reach, with the means granted to them, it is something that
binds us to our most intimate being and is unleashed by dreams,
personalities, ideas, words.
The Great Conversation, which binds us
all, represents a new way to express what we are. It is important to
find the magic made up of random and unexpected encounters, to
rediscover what makes each of us to fly and what can create a common
flight, a viral, infectious one.
The question is not who we are
and where we want to go but what we feel intimately and what we are
capable of communicating today.
Highly critical and negative attitudes
are taking a gloomy color, the light that's behind a cartoon, a new
idea, a dream we now feel on the skin.
Until now, many solutions and situations
have created monsters to attract those who could fight them, creating
groups against something; now there is a desire to act, to laugh, to
investigate, to live more. An attitude that is separating the world into
two large groups.
It is not fiction, every word in the Net hides ability. We can only lie superficially so we are not really capable of lying, just to live.
A single soul, a thousand faces
Thanks Jack, whoever you are ...
Lucia Montauti 