Does your online identity really matter? Why walk on eggshells when you can be yourself, right?
There was a time when embarrassing moments died quietly in our family sitting rooms. Now, anyone can pull a screenshot of a post you made in 2013 like they are presenting evidence before a judge. Everybody would be staring at your digital skeleton, and you would be left deciding whether to deactivate your account or defend yourself over something you did when you were naive.
By now you are familiar with the phrase “the internet never forgets.”
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You might have forgotten what you posted. It might be a picture or a hot take under a comment section. Funnily, you have moved on, but once someone digs out the receipts, what seemed harmless is used to push a narrative you have no control over.
Is Your Online Identity Still You?
One thing social media has done is convince us that online is not real life, so we are encouraged to be open, overshare, be ourselves, live free, and “do you,” whatever that may be.
The person that decides to post thirst traps by 1 a.m. after 4 shots of tequila is you.
The person that decided to insult a stranger over their post is still you.
You are the same person when you glorify “mean girl energy” by rallying a mob against someone with a low follower count for airing their opinion.
What makes you think you are different? Have you convinced yourself the online identity is different from who you are in real life? Have you considered that when the receipts start to fly, no one would ask you for context before making up their mind about you? That screenshot won’t prove to them that you are a changed person. It doesn’t show personal growth. It only tells them your personal principles and ideologies you agree with.
Does Your Digital Footprint Matter?
Social media has shifted from a space where you express your innermost thoughts and post cute vacation pictures for likes. It is now a public archive used to understand who you are. Your online identity is used to judge you.
It’s recently been used by organizations, foreign embassies, and other formal parastatals as a yardstick for moral standards. Some people have come to agree that you are what you post. When you are in your “posting whatever” era, what happens when that version of you follows you into real-life situations?
Tiwi Oluremi, wife of Nollywood actor Kunle Remi, started a podcast recently, and she opened up about her decision to leave social media. She shared that at some point, she realized she wasn’t entirely sure who she was or what she wanted to contribute online. Instead of continuing to show up without intention, she stepped away completely. She also shared that it started to shape parts of her behavior and validation patterns.
What makes her story interesting isn’t really about deleting social media.
It’s about identity.
She stopped to ask herself questions many of us don’t consider. “Who exactly am I being online?”
Not what aesthetic are we curating?
Not what will get us more likes.
But who we are.
She considered this for her career in the long run as well and decided to keep only LinkedIn and be intentional about how she shows up there. She mentioned how she is grateful for that decision because she didn’t know she would end up with a non-controversial actor but had already cleared up an “image” that might be misunderstood.
Because whether we realize it or not, every post, every comment, is part of the story we are sharing of ourselves.
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We’ve seen this happen repeatedly.
Comedian and actor Kevin Hart lost the opportunity to host the Oscars in 2018 after old tweets containing homophobic language resurfaced. The tweets had been posted years before, but once screenshots began circulating, they became impossible to ignore.
In 2018, film director James Gunn was fired by Disney from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 after decade-old tweets where he made offensive jokes about pedophilia, rape, and the Holocaust resurfaced online. It took massive public outcry and the intervention of the film’s cast to get Disney to reinstate him as director in March 2019.
Aside from celebrities, people have lost jobs, visa opportunities, political positions, friendships, and business deals because somebody produced a screenshot from years ago.
Sometimes the receipts expose genuinely harmful behavior.
Sometimes they reveal views people no longer hold or a version of someone that no longer exists.
The internet keeps debating whether a person needs to be given a chance outside their online identity.
How Does This Affect Us?
However, on the flip side, women are familiar with this conversation, especially Black women. We are judged for our comments, posts, vulnerability, and even for not doing anything at all.
Some of us respond by becoming hyper-curated versions of ourselves online. Others become radical and post every thought. But the performance social media demands will leave some people with an online identity that doesn’t match who they are offline.
Your digital footprint goes beyond what employers are checking on your LinkedIn. It’s the posts, quote tweets, reposts, jokes, pictures, and videos. It’s every single argument you supported. Sadly, you don’t get control of how people interpret it.
Maybe you shouldn’t take this as a warning to approach social media with fear, because we have all been peddling posts about kindness and intentionality within cyberspace for a while now. It might be time to practice what we preach. Maybe it’s time to be intentional about how we build our online identity.
Whether you post once a year or three times daily, we are all building a public record.
We are leaving behind clues that strangers will encounter.
Ask yourself what your receipts will say about you.
If your social media pages became a time capsule tomorrow, what story would they tell?
