A brief inquiry into online identity and relationships
Image: Leïth Benkhedda
The myth of Narcissus tells the story of a boy that drowned in a pool of water, whilst admiring his own image. However, how could Narcissus ever fall in love with himself if it wasn’t for the clear waters of the pool, that mirrored his own reflection? And how could the pool ever perceive itself, without seeing its own reflection in the eyes of Narcissus?
Image: Leïth Benkhedda
In an age where we are hyper-exposed to other people, constantly within each other's gaze, are we ever able to escape this spotlight? Being chronically online, I try to reflect on this aspect. How does having an identity online affect me in my real life? Is it the same identity as the one I portray outside of the virtual world, is it an addition or is it a whole new persona? When I was a teen, I would escape my own life in the real world and join communities on the internet, talking with strangers from wherever. It could be through fandom communities, random group chat invitations on instagram, or skype-groups that read the same books or played the same video games. Not that I’ve ever played a video game, but I enjoyed the company of the strangers, who I would speak to daily. At one point, my very best friend was a stranger from the internet. She lived in Denmark and I lived in Norway, yet we never got to meet. Our friendship ended up the same way many online relationships do: it faded away.
By high school, I took a break from social media and online communities, but I came back after a couple of years. Since then, it seemed to have reached a different level of intimacy and exposure. Although the internet and its social platforms have been active for quite some time, with online communities such as myspace, facebook and tumblr, which also used to cultivate an online image, primarily using pictures, text images and captions for expression. Tumblr, which created its own era with the “tumblr girl” persona and style. However, there is something about this new internet persona, which feels a lot more “naked” and raw, and to some extent necessary. Can we fully exist in real life, without also having an online version of ourselves to support it?
The pandemic led to a new wave of online existence, where platforms such as tiktok, instagram and discourse pages became important for many in order to socialize. In that way, because of isolation and quarantine, social platforms became a pretty integrated part of most people's lives. Today, some share every single bit of their lives online. I am not referring to social media influencers, who make money on their own self exposure, but to regular people who are actively using it on a daily basis. An online profile is not just about sharing pictures and special moments from your life at this point, it is about managing your own identity.
By introducing the artwork The internet of friends (TIOF) by Leïth Benkhedda, I will touch on themes related to internet identity and relations. TIOF is an online audio installation about social media use in our modern society, created as the graduation project of Benkhedda during his master’s degree in design from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. During the graduation show, the installation was accompanied by projections created in the app Whisper. This is a social media platform allowing its users to post photos and video material anonymously, with text superimposed over an image, either retrieved from Whisper automatically or uploaded by the user themselves. I came across the audio edition of the installation on the Do Not Research (DNR) website, of which Benkhedda is one of the creators. DNR, explained according to the website description ‘is a “detestable band of washed up millennial seapunks” (Lolcow) and “zoomers obsessed with Mark Fisher” (Buzzfeed). Founded in 2020, DNR began as a private Discord server gathered to discuss memetic propagation and the role of the internet in shaping emergent political trends. Today it is a publishing platform for writing, visual art, internet culture research and more.’ With its coded-looking and Matrix inspired website, they have given digital creators a platform to share and elaborate on their own works as well as discussions, connected to for example meme culture, anthropological inquiries, online movements, political ideologies or art related matters.
When I came across TIOF last year, shortly after it was published online, I was hooked instantly, listening to the audio back to back. In the recording, five friends of Benkhedda, tell their self-written auto fictions of how they have experienced internet identity, culture and community formation. These are friends Benkhedda has met online himself, through various group chats and communities. In the background plays a soundscape, soft and ambient, yet with a building tension, produced by Emir Timur Tokdemir. As the storytelling begins, we hear stories of creating an identity online to escape from your own reality, befriending strangers, the narcissistic aspect of having a virtual profile and being perceived and consumed by others and by yourself. They too take a look into internet forums and the dimensions of them.
Image: Leïth Benkhedda
“I would go days without speaking out loud but would type reams and reams.” (01:51, TIOF) says one of the participants. It is a known fact that some tend to find more comfort and trust in people they have only met online, rather than finding the same security in people that are physically around. Another participant reflects on the affirmative aspect of his online identity, as he confesses his profile to be just as much a platform for self-affirmation as well as looking for confirmation from others.
“An endless recursion of self-recognition and affirmation. I feel compelled to create a self for myself to be consumed by myself. Through image sharing social media platforms I watch myself… through image sharing social media platforms I create a self to be consumed by others but also by me.” (5:20, The Internet of Friends)
This really underlines the idea that an internet profile makes it possible to self-explore, as you find different matters that you identify with and relate to. You are exposed to ideas, aesthetics and personality traits that might align with your own idea of who you want to be. So you adopt them and make it a part of yourself. However, as we are constantly being exposed to micro trends online, it is difficult to see whether we are actually creating our own identity or just following the trends. And while trying to keep up with these trends, we consume more products. Are we trying to buy ourselves an identity? And if we are all following the same trends and consuming the same products, are we just an echo of internet identities that come and go, depending on the trends? Social media platforms contribute to a very explosive way of self expression, as well as it has constant availability and provides you constant affirmation in the looks of likes, comments and views, from others who follow your profile online. At this point, do we even know whether we are more concerned with our own self perception or the people who perceive us?
I reached out to Benkhedda in order to get the backstory correct. The idea behind the installation came from Benkhedda’s own experience with being a part of an internet community. During the pandemic the artist became more active online, collecting content, exploring and starting different discords, forming communities and joining group chats with people across the world. After a while he became part of an internet group that would at some point run a meme-page together, but they eventually burned out, Benkhedda shared. Instead, it became a reading group reflecting on critical works such as Capitalist Realism from Mark Fischer, which, very easily said, discusses the consequences of capitalism. They developed a web blog as a private discord only for the group, but eventually it became an open platform. In his installation, I believe Benkhedda captures very important aspects and perspectives from people who are reflecting on their own online identity and the communities they engaged in. How the virtual world mattered, somehow more than the outside world at different times in their life. They also open up about different struggles with mental health, whether it be finding your purpose, or figuring out who you actually are inside of your own body. You can hear the melancholy in the first voice, as she echoes her experience, seeking communities and being a part of them. How important the friendships were at some point. How one stranger could hold all of her secrets, without ever having met her or knowing who she actually is. How I understand the installation is that it reflects how the internet has formed us with its unlimited providing of new content as well as the culture that exists online, and it has grown to become an even more significant part of our everyday life. It shows the different dimensions of communities that we are being exposed to, whether we become a part of them or not. It shows how individuals confide in people they connect with online, which has outcomes that can both make you hopeful, but also absolutely terrified. Whether you get lifelong friends, even partners, or you get caught in a lie or permanently blocked from someone's profile, or you engage in web forums that are merely there to make you feel worthless.
Image: Leïth Benkhedda
Today, we can see the somewhat necessity to have a profile online. A self. Something that reflects you for others to see. Both for practical reasons, and for conceptual ones. As we are constantly exposed to people and their expressions, all while we’re trying to make sense of our own impressions, it can feel almost impossible to be fully satisfied with how we present ourselves virtually, within this echo of other people. But it is a paradox, because at the same time, one could say that in a sense we are no longer able to experience ourselves completely for who we are, without using other people as a mirror for ourselves. And if we are using other people as our mirrors, are we then merely contributing to this echo, where we all become the same concept, instead of our own?
Oscar Wilde once also wrote about the myth of Narcissus, but depicting a version I feel relate to the modern society:
“When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.
And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said ‘We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.’
‘But was Narcissus beautiful?’ said the pool.
‘Who should know that better than you?’ answered the Oreads. ‘Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.’
And the pool answered, ‘But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.’”
(O. Wilde, The Disciple, 1894)