The End of Forgetting
My point is that there is something liberating about being able to forget the past and reinvent yourself in the present. Much of growing up, I would argue, is about reinventing yourself multiple times, and that requires being able to forget who you were six months ago, three years ago, 10 years ago.
I can envision a social media world where you can choose to wipe clean your slate at points of life transition, removing the media and the social connections that tie you to that old you.
Or even one where you can engage in role segmentation more effectively, having a work role, a close friends role, a club member role, an online forum role, all at the same time. This would be different from keeping a centralized profile and hiding parts or posts from different sub-groups in that it would be showing different groups different additive information. In today's world, person is multiple selves all before lunch.
The challenge is in social media typically generating income by shaving off the corners of self to put people into specific and perhaps unchanging boxes for viewing ads. The motivation isn't there for enabling self-exploration as an ongoing and ephemeral excursion.
-CDKS
POSTED: May 24, 2019 | CATEGORIES: social sociology | TAGS:
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