Good Example Of A Brave New Digital World Makes Brave New Digital People Essay

Since new forms of media have been actively capturing the globe during the last decade, people who did not succeed in real world got a chance to start all over again and create other personalities in virtuality.
Modern social media users “promote” their identities in different ways according to how they want their personal image be presented: someone seeks for being famous and shocking; others want to be reputable and respected. People online loudly exaggerate their advantages as well as shyly hide disadvantages; they are mostly obsessed with the idea of being interesting and exciting to other people online, and consider it as their duty to estimate whether other media users are interesting and exciting enough.
What people should remember while creating their digital doubles is that once user has entered the world of Internet, from now on everyone can become acquainted with him in absentia. This fact makes the way of how users present themselves on social media platforms be more accurate, thought-out, and cautious. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, My Space, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, blogs – all of them are open sources and freely available for public. For that matter, a student who wants to receive a place in privileged company for his first internship should think twice before posting “funny” photos from the recent party with alcohol and girls on Facebook.
In her article “Dressing for Success in Cyberspace: Give Yourself a Digital Make-Over”, Courtney Hunt explains the importance of “digital appearance” within “the cloud” since new digital era creates an alternative world – virtual world – where presentation of our personalities is essential to the extent that it is significant in the real world. The author emphasizes that people’s “digital identity and brand are much more public and powerful than how they’re known and perceived in the physical world.” (Hunt “Dressing for Success in Cyberspace”)
In digital space, we need to be such attractive, intellectual, and pleasant people as we seek to be in “physical” world. Consequently, as soon as virtual reality started coexisting with real world, people faced with the need to develop not one, but two self-images.
Although Stacey Koosel, a doctoral candidate at the Estonian Academy of Arts, talks about “private public paradox” which lies in “wanting privacy and publicity at the same time” (Koosel “Exploring Digital Identity”), the concept of personal brand unceasingly becomes more and more important for everyone who uses social media platforms. By creating a digital identity, Stacey Koosel determines, people “experience informational self-determination.” (Koosel) Such self-determination is caused by the significance of proper “promoting” of personal brand within digital world.
Cyberspace allows users to create more irreproachable or even brand new image of themselves, and now this personal brand is the result of well-thought-out concept of self-promoting. Just as in real life where people seek to belong to various parts of community and feel themselves necessary and important, in digital world the same idea remains. And in order to distinguish ourselves from many other users, we need to develop our personal brand – something that will differentiate us from the endless flow of digital people; something that will characterize us as the very special citizens of the brave new digital world.

Works Cited

Hunt, Courtney. “Dressing for Success in Cyberspace: Give Yourself a Digital Make-Over.” The Denovati Group, March 16, 2014. Web. Feb 17. 2015.
Koosel, Stacey. “Exploring Digital Identity: Beyond the Private Public Paradox.” Academia.edu. Web. Feb 17. 2015.