So this past weekend I joined Facebook. I already have 60+ friends, which is approximately 50 more friends than I have in the so-called real world. My Facebook friends are a weird mix of family, friends, colleagues and people I haven’t seen since high school or college.
Yesterday our local radio show “The State of Things” devoted an entire hour to Facebook. Which means that we both are officially way behind the times.
One issue that was discussed was the problem of juggling multiple identities on Facebook when friends from all your different “worlds” — like work, school, hanging out, family, even your mom — come together and can see your status updates. How do you keep all of your personas straight?
I think this is a non-problem. One of the goals of life should be to discover who we are and then try to live as authentically as we can. At least, this is one of the goals of my life. That doesn’t mean that we don’t grow and change over time. I am certainly not the same person I was in high school, and I am thankful for that.
What it does mean is that if you’re struggling to present one persona to the people you work with and another to your afterwork friends and another to your family, then something is off. In one or more spheres of your life, you are not being true to yourself.
I am not saying that we should reveal 100% of who we are on Facebook or any other social networking site. Facebook is a public forum, so baring your soul there would be no more appropriate than it would at a conference or a cocktail party. What I am saying is that we should just be who we are, at all times, no matter who we are interacting with. I have generally found that most people like and respect this, and those that don’t — probably I don’t want to be interacting with them after all. Besides, it’s a lot less exhausting to just be yourself rather than trying to be what everyone else expects you to be.
And then you don’t really have to worry about who is reading your status updates.
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shannon.turlington AT gmail.com 
I would agree — being authentic online and offline is the overarching goal. Perhaps authentic with a side of diplomatic and polite, but still authentic.
I will say that I do have my Facebook friends segregated into lists — not everyone gets to see my status updates, and not everyone gets to see every single picture, but the rest of what I’ve got up there is pretty much open. Same with Twitter — it’s not like I have that hidden from view, either.
But it is an interesting line to walk. And a lot of people are very uncomfortable with being who they really are…in public, or not.
I hope my post came off as encouraging rather than lecturing. I encourage people to be who they really are. You have to do it to become comfortable with it. But I realize it is a process, not like flipping a switch.