Online Identities

Online identity has been an issue for my generation. In an age of information literacy, today's world also has to evaluate the validity of online personas.
Thirty years ago, hackers were not that big of a deal. The information they "hacked" gave rise to modern technology that we have today. Thirty years ago, bullying, abductions, and stolen identities were problems that occurred in real life, not cyber space. Online identities have allowed people to mask their identities in order to gather information or be a flat out creep.

Online identity is not a bad thing in every aspect.
Online identity has given way to every day people to create interesting personas based on hobbies, interests, education, or other characteristics that give advice, inspiration, or amusement.

One of my favorite things to do is Google questions.
I'm not talking about "Why is the sky blue?" or other knowledgeable information. Sometimes I like to ask ridiculous things, perhaps if my love life is suffering I can Google "How to make your dating life interesting again" and come up with all of these self-help articles. One of my favorites leads me to what things in dreams mean and other psychological themed issues. The response is often a number of online personas answering these questions whose whole cyberspace "life" is devoted to what different things found in dreams symbolize. Some of these people are insane, their biography section talks about how connected they are to people in the afterlife, or perhaps they are practicing witchcraft. Not all online identities are strange or bad.

Organizations also have online identities. My sorority Alpha Delta Pi portrays a professional and historical presence.

Universities organize their webpages to entice viewers' interest of their University.

The Ku Klux Klan online looks like a big club of rednecks barbecuing while wearing sheets. Beware of researching them, some of their websites gave my computer a virus during a research project one time.



Online identity can be truthful, misleading, or as insane as the person behind the computer screen wishes.

I think the biggest problem with online identities is that it makes the internet a potentially misleading and distrustful place.
Lifetime movie network has a number of movies that portray the dangers of trusting online identities.
There is the typical one where a dumb high school girl tries to meet up with some secret admirer on instant messaging and then it's like a 60 year old killer.
There is the ever so popular bullying case movies where a girl kills herself or something drastic happens because somebody at school has a fake online ID and "tortures" her.

Why is this such a problem? Thirty years ago, our parents were concerned with us getting kidnapped and talking to strangers. Now, we're concerned with what kids are looking at online, who they are "talking" to, and the potential for their friends to actually be a case of stolen identity.

Criminals had to get smarter with the age of technology, therefore, instead of lurking in the shadows, they are hiding behind masks of familiar faces.

Why does society focus so heavily on the negative online identities?
What is required for an identity to be considered legitimate and trustworthy?

The answer seems to rely on identities being backed up by organizational presence. For example, news networks who have twitter accounts appear very legitimate.
John Travolta tweeting seems further removed because he probably pays people to tweet for him.
As a person in Alabama, I don't have the pleasure of seeing John Travolta strutting down Main Street to believe he'd tweet about certain issues.

I'm more likely to believe in the online identity of James Spann.
[The local weather man for Birmingham area, this interjection is for our professor who luckily has yet to experience James Spann's extreme weather reporting during 'Nater season.]

Online identities also provide the space to release the internal personality that exists in our writing.

This “self” perhaps can more easily discuss a topic through text than in person.

Perhaps that is why online bullying is such a problem in our youth. 

For me, this online “self” allows more of my humor than I can portray in real life circumstance. I’m often thinking something I’m not saying, but online identity sees no reason to hold back because I don’t care if you’re actually laughing when you read this.

Wouldn’t it be really creepy if online identity revealed your “true” self? For example, people that hack, and bully and steal identities are just bad people?

I’m not sure, I have no ability to judge the actions of others. 

Rhetoric Remix

Charlie Sheen and Intellectual Property

When I think about the term Intellectual Property, a "Violent Torpedo of Truth" illumines one central figure in my mind:  Charlie Sheen.
A little research on Google including the terms: Charlie Sheen and Intellectual Property will surely bing you a couple hours of entertainment.
According to an article from the Washington College of Law: Intellectual Property Brief, a general list of ridiculous trademarks was compiled:

A general list of trademarks that Sheen’s company has applied for. Well, here it is, and here’s how I found it[i]:

1. VIOLENT TORPEDO OF TRUTH
2. CHARLIE SHEEN
3. SURPRISE. THAT’S WHAT WINNERS DO
4. PARK YOUR NONSENSE
5. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED
6. I AM NOT BI-POLAR, I AM BI-WINNING
7. DEFEAT IS NOT AN OPTION
8. LIVING THE SHEEN DREAM
9. GODDESS SUITE
10. WARLOCK LOUNGE
11. ADONIS DNA
12. TORPEDO OF TRUTH
13. SHEEN’S GODDESSES
14. S¢K
15. WINNING
16. SOBER VALLEY LODGE
17. VATICAN ASSASSIN
18. TIGER WATER
19. ROCK STAR FROM MARS
20. DUH, WINNING
21. TIGER BLOOD
22. TIGER PLASMA
23. SHEEN’S KORNER

Eric Perrott, the author of this article describes how Charlie Sheen's company legitimized their trademarks:

When Sheen’s company applied for these trademarks, they blanketed the “goods and services” section with a wide variety of possible uses, including “NON-MEDICATED HAIR, SKIN AND NAIL PREPARATIONS,” “PUBLICATIONS . . . FEATURING SPORTS,” and “LINENS AND BEDDING.” Don’t get too concerned about seeing “Vatican Assassin” bed sheets in the near future – if the trademarks are approved, the exact uses will be determined later by Sheen’s group, and only the goods and services where he uses the trademark in commerce will actually be protected.

 

 Charlie Sheen is obviously an extreme example of Intellectual Property. Most things that are under the question of "intellectual property" are actually legitimate ideas that need patents so people don't steal ideas and become millionares off of poor Bobby Joe's amazing idea. I understand the necessity of the Intellectual property age, but I think this Charlie Sheen stunt definately highlighted that our age has gone a little overboard in determining who "owns" this or that. If Sheen can coin a term as vague and reoccuring as "Winning", who owns other words? I'm particularly fond of cats, so can I own the rights to all things " cat " ?  YOU'VE BEEN WARNED, I'm about to present to you a TORPEDO OF TRUTH:   In today's world, people can own language and symbols.

My biggest question is where this ownership ends. For example, if I owned all things cat, do I own your cat? Do I own partial profits to people making cat toys? Should people be paying me money to have, talk, or make things cat related?
If Charlie Sheen owns the word "winning", when a football team wins, does he get some sort of trophy, too?

Also, I can't really blame the man, he was constantly in the press with people being so obsessed about what and who he was doing. If people were going to be so fully involved in his buisness, can't he decide what about him he owns, whether it be his catch phrases or the way he lives his life?

This being said, I'm certainly not siding with Sheen and saying that he should be able to own language, I'm just saying I don't protest his actions that, no doubt, stemmed from all the crap he was getting.

The right to claim ownership in language is the conquest of a new world. Instead of countries setting out to place governments in a place, countries are sending governments to claim langauge and the manipulation of language.

 Sheen's a little bit of genious, if you ask me, becasue I feel like he realizes the ridiculous nature of trademarking phrases, words, etc, but he has the money to do it, and people are stupid enough to have a process to allow it to happen!


Have you ever considered the idiot who established a process to go through to make it possible to get the rights to something like a word or phrase? Some group of lawyers were sitting around thinking, "Someday someone is going to try to own words, let's have a process so that we can deal with this."
And realistically, they were geniouses too, because right now intellectual property is a big deal. I guess it's because we have the leisure time to think about these kinds of affairs. I suppose it's just the advancement of times, like centuries ago when people didn't really spend that much time debating "What is life?" because they were too busy trying to survive.
In the age of technology, we're no longer just trying to survive, but rather we are claiming land and giving it new names because we have nothing better to do.
So now it matters if that check mark on a brand of clothing MEANS something or if it's a design.

Intellectual property seems to boil down to one thing, what can be owned?
The question of who can own is answered easily: anyone with enough money. Therefore, Sheen is laughing all the way to the bank. SURP.RISE. THAT'S WHAT WINNERS DO.