Online personality residue

While I’ve been working to get my new blog going (7 entries strong!), I've been thinking a lot about how thinly my online persona is stretched, or at least my ability to remember all of it. My other blog has been going strong for 5 years, with 1,011 entries, and I'm pretty accustomed to updating it regularly and coming back to reply to comments. Here, I'm carving out the additional time to update, reply, etc. Because of the different audience and focus, it's certainly worthwhile. But what about the rest of my online persona? I could have a blog on Youtube, on MySpace, and probably 2/3 of the other random social networking sites where I have accounts. In order to do so, I would probably either duplicate the exact same entries everywhere or write 2 words every 2 weeks. So much for that.

Even besides that, simply keeping up with an ever-growing number of sites and tools is sort of overwhelming. I have Flickr and Photobucket accounts, and randomly came across a Webshots account a few weeks ago that I'd forgotten I had. At least I have some photos of 2004 back. Because MySpace, Friendster, Connexion, and Facebook weren't attractive to an old friend who is reconnecting with everyone she can find online, I also just joined MyYearbook.com (or something like that; I can't quite remember the URL, so my password is out of the question). And I check about 60 blogs with some frequency. It appears that the more online media is placed in front of me, the more I will consume.

Result? I haven't had to declare e-mail bankruptcy (thanks to the art of deleting without reading), but I do feel as though my attention has been pulled in many directions online. N. Katherine Hayles focused a talk I attended last fall on the effects of new media on younger generations, and proposed that such things as multiple social networking sites and TVs in every room of the house result in the attention of young people being divided ever farther. (Refer to the Kaiser Family Foundation's report, "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds," for some additional background.) I want to clarify that Hayles did not mean that what she calls "deep attention" is simply lacking in young people, but that it is often focused on, say, an ever-growing Facebook rather than something else. I feel that I'm reaching the limit to my "hyperattention."

As I inevitably abandon some of the websites I used to visit frequently, I am calling the information they hold about me "online personality residue." I'm sure it has been otherwise named, but I rather like this take (and will talk about the potential negative implications in a future entry.) At the risk that people might think that my favorite movie is still Bring It On, I'm going to leave it as is for now.