Passing Stranger is a sound-rich chronicle of poets and poetry associated with the East Village. Narrated by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, it contains site-specific poetry, interviews with poets, archival recordings and music by John Zorn.
In thinking about this post and the boundaries at play, I'm wondering about this: what's the diff between FB and Twitter, esp. in this case? Why talk to anyone via one platform, but a restricted group on another?
Some days I don't feel like leaving messages in the (potential) digital panopticon of communication. I write something with a hashtag and I have no idea who reads it. Or who takes a screenshot and saves it forever. We could even try and figure out the data structures, models, and infrastructure Facebook develops for targeting advertising based on gender, age, birthday, education, relationship status and other information collected over the course of your 'timeline'. At any rate, her point is that she uses different virtual social networks based on notions of different physical social networks, because those things are supposed to private and separated online as well, right?
Some days I do abide. On those days, I try to be much more mindful of what I write.
What are your boundaries? How would you have handled the friend request I mention above?
In the offline world, we all have different personas for different situations. Say the differences between how we interact or represent ourselves at work, with friends, with lovers, with children, with strangers, etc. Are we simply transposing or correlating these personal differences to online social spaces as if they still equally apply? It seems natural that we would be concerned with privacy, surveillance, or safety, but if it just a matter of establishing certain social boundaries, should they really be defined the same in a digital environment as they are in the offline world? If so, why?