What is an “online persona”? Stop trying to turn my tech support forum into Facebook!
Your persona is your personal “brand,” your representation of yourself within The Spectacle.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
-Guy Debord
Debord was right on, but I doubt even he predicted us mediating our own images, becoming increasingly directly part of The Spectacle.
Full Disclosure: My real name is not Snot Flickerman.
In June 2010, the government was expressing real interest in social networks. The Air Force issued a public request for “persona management software,” which might sound boring until you realize that the government essentially wanted the ability to have one agent run multiple social media accounts at once.
It wanted 50 software licenses, each of which could support 10 personas, “replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent.”
The software would allow these 50 cyberwarriors to peer at their monitors all day and manipulate these 10 accounts easily, all “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries.” The personas would appear to come from all over the world, the better to infiltrate jihadist websites and social networks, or perhaps to show up on Facebook groups and influence public opinion in pro-US directions.
There’s a whole slew of software aimed at creating numerous sockpuppet accounts that is called “Persona Management Software.” It’s certainly the word the US government uses to describe an online identity.
