Who is your Social Self?

Today was certainly a day of learning at the office. Armed with my iPad (for fear of boredom) a banana (for fear of hunger) and tea (for fear of sleep deprivation getting to me) I made my way to Digital Sales Training 101. Enduring 3.5 hours of digital training at 1st seemed like a bore to me because I come from the digital world- but this was my 1st ever formal sales training, so I was sparked with a hint of excitement. As with most publications, we spoke a lot about social media as it is a clear hot topic. Did you know that when sharing things in the social spectrum, our serotonin levels actually increase giving us some sort of high. I can feel mine increasing right now as I write this post and prepare to hit 'Publish'...kidding, I am sitting in my bed about to turn in. Anyways, I found it quite interesting as we continued to discuss social media in the realm of categorization. Increasingly, we are seeing sites and brand awareness campaigns develop 'badges' where users are able to take a short quiz or submit some information about themselves to see (and share of course) what kind of badge they would fall under. I admit I am guilty of this seamless exercise, and according to Amex's Facebook page- I am a Poshaholic (whatever that means). I started to think about how we are forced to join these interest groups within the social world- can we really be locked into one? Is it fair that we are sharing this information with our "friends" when it really doesn't describe us a whole person? I even learned today that there is such thing called trypophobia- the fear of sharing things (also one of the top 3 non-branded things searched on PopSci.com, just in case you were wondering). Hitting share can be scary! I mean you are essentially spreading all of your cards out on a table to the universe to say 'HEY WORLD LOOK AT ME- feel free to comment and like." Later in the day, after seeing the head of the FCC speak at the Ad Tech convention at the Javits Center- I remembered that once you put data out there, it lives online FOREVER. And so organizations such as the FCC are working hard to develop regulations on content sharing and user information gathering. When it comes down to it...do we find ourselves molding our real identities based on our Social Selves? The FCC would like to say no- but on that note, I am going to hit the 'Publish' button :)
xoxo AA