Identity and Lifestreaming

Rebecca Reyes

Wargo, Jon M. “Every selfie tells a story: LGBTQ youth lifestreams and new media narratives as connective identity texts.” New Media & Society, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2015, pp. 560-577.

Summary:

Jon M. Wargo followed 3 LGBTQ high school students’ social media accounts to analyze how their identity online combats/contrasts what their identity is perceived as offline. Termed lifestreaming—“a rhetorical act of streaming documents, texts, and visuals to curate an imagined and real self”—these teenagers post material they feel embodies who their true selves are while simultaneously combatting inequality (560). Wargo argues that social media has turned digital photography in a literacy practice.  Using think aloud sessions to discover the reasoning and motivation behind their posts, Wargo discusses the effect that their social media posts have on their own identity. For example, with Camille, while walking down the hallways of the high school with Wargo, a group of boys yelled out, “Look at that big Black butch!” (568). Although she told Wargo to ignore their insults, she later posted on her social media account an image of her nail polish collection, attempting to affirm her girly-girl self identity. On the other hand, we have Zeke. He is a 6’1 African American male. Being gay, he knows the stereotypes that come along with it such as being ‘flamboyant.” Coming from a traditional family, their ideals on masculinity are constantly being thrown at him. Thus, he does appear to attempt to separate himself from the LGBTQ community, saying he’s “not one of those loud gays” who are “too pink” (566). On his social media, he uploaded an image of his basketball jersey, affirming his idea of ‘masculinity.’ Lastly, Jake is a transgender male going through transition. He consistently posts images of his progress to give his followers encouragement and proof that there can be success. Through social media, digital photography, and their writings accompanying each post, these teens either confirmed or combatted their offline identities by providing counter-narratives. As LGBTQ youth, lifestreaming has opened up the opportunity to provide “topographies of visual representation to write a self that felt most real to them. Identitiesin which their sexuality and gender, alongside of their youth status, were not peripheral to their everyday lives, but central” (576).

Response:

Personally, I found Camille’s story fascinating. She may be a high school student but she does what she can to use her social media as a platform for identity creation and for social change. Living in a town where homosexuality is still seen as something out of the ordinary, Camille tries to find ways to educate those around her of political correctness. For example, she started a blog in order to the use of words like “retard,” the use of “gay” in the negative sense, “stupid,” or “ugly.” She explains to Wargo why she does this: “Students just throw this language around like it doesn’t mean anything, like they don’t realize who they’re hurting or what they’re really saying. And everyone thinks it’s ok because everyone does it so often, but it’s not ok. They’re ignorant” (570). I found that particularly profound for someone her age. As a minority in sexual orientation, gender, and race, Camille understands the way in which words and language can affect someone. With her own experiences, she lifestreams, hoping to change the narrow views of those around her. In another instance, Camille also writes about how she always gets asked, “Who’s the girl and who’s the guy in the relationship?” That angers her. Because it is an interracial relationship and Camille is physically bigger than her girlfriend, people assume she is the ‘boy.’ However, Camille constantly posts images, statuses, and blogs showing the femininity that both she and her girlfriend possess in order to counter the idea that there must be a male and female figure in the relationship. Lifestreaming is both an archive and an outlet for political, social, and personal change. The moment someone posts a selfie, a status, or blog, their story becomes accessible to the public. Through this digital literacy practice, we see that “there’s an identity beyond the physical body, we’re always unfinished” (573).

Quotations:

“LGBTQ youth use digital tools to index a myriad of selves; selves that participants argued were not centered in school and disavowed from in more formal learning spaces that devalue these so-called techtual counter-economies” (561).

“Identities as narratives are never created out of whole cloth, never uniquely individual, but rather each narrative is a retelling, an act of social interaction, a positioned intervention in the shared, contested narratives of a given culture” (563).

“Through design and the creation of artifactual techno-literacies, LGBTQ yyouth are composing in digital environments to write and (re)present the fragmented self” (574).