There is an excellent story in this week's New Yorker (10 March 2008), "Raj, Bohemian" by Hari Kunzru, about an urban hipster who realizes that his "taste had been central to my identity" (114). As a result, he has no self other than the objects he acquires and the carefully considered acts (where to eat, what parties to go to, how to dress, etc.) he executes, which unwittingly become performance art pieces rather than natural maneuvers. So he is only living synthetically. He laments that "what I thought had been an expression of my innermost humanity was nothing but a cloud of life-style signals, available to anyone at the click of a mouse" (114).
This conclusion struck me because 1. the speaker realizes that he has no humanity left, he is just a pawn (chess metaphor!) in the capitalist system, but more importantly 2. it made me question the role of "the click[s] of a mouse" in my life and whether they fulfill some sort of genuine self-defining role (which I view positively; this positive view of one's essential self as somehow pure and good and something to be preserved and fostered may be problematic, but for my purposes here I will accept this view as a given), or whether they are merely "life-style signals" (which is a negative in this model). Let's examine three internet activities I frequently engage in to try and answer this question.
1. amazon.com - My frequent amazoning is an essential part of my book-buying addiction. So the question is, is this addiction an integral part of myself, or is it just a "life-style signal"? While the search for knowledge, which I still prefer to gain from books rather than via electronic means, is certainly an essential part of who I am, I love emitting the persona of a well-read intellectual. I would like to think that I can actually claim this description of myself, but I have to admit that aside from engaging in activities (e.g., getting my doctorate) that help me fit in to this description, I like to also have my chock-full, sagging, meticulously organized bookshelves visible to everyone to help enforce this claim. Books are valuable to me as decor, not just as sources of knowledge. This is why I never use libraries except for professional research, preferring to buy my books rather than rent them. So I have to say that my online book-buying is more of a "life-style signal" than a necessary expression of myself.
2. blogging - I think my reasons for blogging are fairly honorable - I do it to improve my writing, I'm not worried about whether or not I have a big (or any) audience (note my willingness to write often about sports, which nearly all of my friends disdain), and I do it to become a better writing teacher, since to be a good teacher you must also be a frequent practitioner in your field. So even though it may be fashionable to have a web presence, it is fair to say that I don't blog just to be hip or current.
3. facebook - While my initial ardor for facebook has cooled a bit in the past few days - I no longer feel a compulsion to check it every five minutes - I am still very much enthralled with it. I have to say that it was peer pressure which finally caused me to set up an account, not my own volition. So even though I genuinely enjoy facebook now, I can't escape that being a member is solidly in the "life-style signal" category.
Ergo, the majority of my internet activity is not motivated by an interest in self-definition and -improvement, but by attempts to appear cool. I will not deal with the question of what should be done about this state of affairs here, but it is interesting to note that the protagonist of Kunzru's story goes back to a "life-style signal" driven existence at the story's end because he cannot figure out how to escape this paradigm.
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