As Twitter is increasingly becoming more popular by the day, I have been seeing many great news articles being written about it.
I found an article written April 6 that talked about fake identities of celebrities on Twitter. They talk about it in a more comedic way than usual, which gave it added appeal.
If you want to read the whole article here is the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30032294
I think this article is interesting because I have mainly been touching upon “normal” peoples identities being involved in this type of setting, but we have to think of the people that are in the spotlight all the time too, and how these new technologies are affecting their identities as well.
This can relate back to the article we read titled Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet by Brey. Specifically, when he talks about some of the benefits of the Internet including Information Dissemination. As a reminder, this just means that the internet makes it possible for anyone to quickly and easily post and disperse information and make that information available to a large amount of people, even though that information might not be completely true or appropriate.
For example, recently Dina Lohan, mother of Lindsey Lohan, was impersonated on Twitter by “clever Twitter troll Matt Cherette. He recently raked the exposed nerves of sensitive Twitter fanboys and inadvertently punked E!’s alleged comedian Chelsea Handler by posing as celebrity mom Dina Lohan on an extended rant regarding the unfairness of Twitter’s 140 character limit.” This proves that not only net newbies are falling for these fake identities, but other celebrities too!
Now as we all know, with the fame and fortune of being a celebrity, there is also going to rumors and false information posted about you online, but it is still not right, or is it?
On top of people impersonating celebrities that are alive, there has been a recent spike in people pretending to be people who have died like Edgar Allen Poe and Walt Whitman.
Do you feel like this is okay? These people have passed away and now someone is pretending to be them and they have no control over it. Not that the celebrities who are alive have control over it either but still…….it’s a touchy subject.
I think that you bring up great points, people don't think about celebrities and some would even argue that it's their fault for being in the public eye. Yes when they go out and the paparazzi follow them its kind of what they signed up for. But to have people impersonating them is just wrong. A lot of people think these impersonators are real, and if the impersonator says something wrong they could lose the real persons fans. And as far as people saying that they are someone is well known to be dead, I do think its wrong and disrespectful. Isnt there a law about pretending to be someone else. I think with the new trends like twitter there needs to be some sort of penalty if people are caught doing this, but then that begs the question how would you go about catching these people. You get them to erase one twitter but that doesnt mean they cant open up another one in someone elses name.
ReplyDeleteYa very touchy stuff. In terms of the celebs it's kind of a harsh reality but that kind of stuff just comes with the territory. They kind of unwillingly forfit a lot of privacy when they choose fame. I'm not saying it is right it is just a fact of life. And i would say most of them probably know that before hand. I know if i look at a celebs profile i take a lot of things with a grain of salt. In terms of impersonating dead people that i think is rather disrespectful. If you make a fan profile that is one thing but to speak on the behalf the dead is just not right. I just don't know how it can be regulated the internet is such a huge place. I do think something needs to be done about it, but i don't have the answer of what that could be.
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