Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

Myspace has three primary functions: The Form, The Search Engine, and the Locus Point for Communication.
In functioning as a form, individuals are allowed to catalog themselves by choosing information and being selective for the portrayal of his/her personhood. When you first set up your account, you are asked to fill in a form regarding specifications of who you are, your identity - like what job do you have? - your life - how much money do you make in one year? - and most interestingly, your body. Height, Weight, physique type - even asking you to talk about what you want to do with your body, as in, do you want kids? what is your sexual orientation? Are you a smoker and/or a drinker? Who would you like to meet? What type of person are you considering having sex with?
With Myspace, people present images of themselves by filling out a visual form. The practice of putting a series o��(f photos from one's regular day or diaries of one's day on a blog on myspace can be understood as a form of social interaction. We could say that in this case, as in the case of the photobook, the person is engaged in a presentation of a persona or identity that one adopts; which may resemble their everyday world, or not. Who actually knows what one really looks like in this way?
One can also post a blog which can include information such as poetry, tour date information, current social events, how to bake apple struedel, The blog extends t��áhe everyday; making known or public the private world of the individual. We also get feedback as others (sometimes strangers) give us feedback about ourselves.

In functioning as a search engine, myspace allows access to persons, music, general information, jobs, horoscopes, videos, news. . .the list goes on. It acts as public access to humans via personal information in a self-constructed library. If on a page youre particularly keen on, the space also acts as a directing course of interaction and connection, via the TOP 8. or top 12, or 32, etc. There is a very expansive inter-web within the myspace pages themselves in this way. . .��s
As a locus point of communication, there are certain roles that are played out in this space of information distribution and consumption. There is the Displayer - one who posts information regarding their identity - the Informer/ Distributer- one who posts impersonal information, the Observer/ Voyueur - one who may be innocently curious about this guys music page... or maybe a peeping-tom, interested in the lives of others, what other people look like, what they're doing. The informer is typically unaware of the viewer, and the only way they are notified that someone has looked at their page is by a profile views counter, which only counts the hits to the page, not who has looked. . .so the information provided in this cyberspace setting varies quite a bit from person-to-person interaction in that the informer is posting to the invisible viewer. . .but THIS is who c��œould very easily be looking at your myspace. . .everyday, they are waiting for your updates! As an online community, you can send messages, post resumes or job openings, create school communities, or join groups, such as I Love Cyndi Lauper or Columbia College Dropouts to confer about certain subjects and ideas.
So, we can identify in these three examples, of myspace's function: the form, the search engine, and as a locus point of communication - primary concepts that are important in understanding the relationship between leisure interactions and identity on myspace, concepts such as:
∑ Self-determination and autonomy
∑ Creativity and exploration
∑ Identity differentiation and individuation,
∑ Role play��
+, That leisure provides a space for such imagination, also the freedom to transcend social structural limitations, freedom to play with ideas, with fantasies and with social relationships
∑ Anonymity , That identity is not fixed, but evolving, fluid
∑ Belonging (sense of community, affiliation).
On Myspace, we can cast off everyday realities and take on new identities. We present another version of self to a social world that is mediated by technology, often as altered and often disembodied identities. This sense of play is emphasised in extraordinary social spaces, or in our case leisure zones that take one beyond the everyday, the adoption of different roles and/or identities, and greater bodily and socio-cultural freedom than that ordinarily experienced. ���∂are free perhaps from some of the rules and expectations experienced in everyday life and where they can perform various roles or identities and develop new forms of relationships.