Identity Crisis

I just got the chance to see SNL's skit from Sat night about the VP debate. Again, spot-on and hilarious. HIGHLY recommended, as are the other two skits starring Tina Fey as Palin.


Recently my friend loaned me a laptop with windows xp, and on the initial screen the user avatar he chose for me was a rubber duck. Clicking on that brought me to the desktop, and the wallpaper he chose was from the film Return of the King. This got me thinking about identity - specifically, what images we choose to represent ourselves.

Perhaps you've had this same experience: you walk into one of those 'hip' stores like Spencer Gifts or Newbury Comics and you're confronted with a bunch of items - let's say bobble-head dolls. Whereas in the past all the bobble heads were sports figures, today they have a bobble head for everything. So you stand in front of the wall of bobble heads and you wonder: if I'm gonna pick just one of these things, which one most represents me? If you're like me, you can't decide and walk away empty handed. The idea of a cool, hip bobble head from an obscure 70's cartoon character is wonderful, but does Grape Ape really represent me? Atom Ant?

Now on this brave new world of computers, we can choose wallpaper, screen-savers and avatars from a literal world of images, but which one(s) actually represent who we are? I guess for a lot of people this is easy. After all, I see friends' computers with great images flashing past - or I read posts with interesting avatars - and I think that these pictures must accurately reflect the user. I also think what a one-dimensional way to reflect who they are.

For me, I just can't seem to do it. For example, let's go back to the laptop. When I looked at the user account pics that my friend could've chosen for me, I saw that none of them really reflect who I am. I love animals, but the cat and dog pics were too cutesy; and besides, my love for animals is just one aspect of my personality. The rubber duck he chose was for all intents and purposes probably the best he could've done. I actually do have a small collection of rubber 'devil' ducks, and I do enjoy the quirky. As far as the wallpaper, I do enjoy fantasy and have loved Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series since I was a child, but again this is just one small aspect of who I am. Did my friend think this was a much greater part of me? Could he not think of any other pics that he thought I might enjoy? Am I thinking too much about this?

Ultimately, I kept the user account avatar as the rubber duck. However, I changed the wallpaper to the cover art of "The Great Lost Kinks Album," and the screen saver is now random images from various Kinks logos. Do these images accurately represent me? Not totally, but they'll do for now, at least until I take the time to gather more images. Of course, none of this matters all that much. The computer is really just for me, and the likelihood that someone else will see it and/or watch my screen-saver is fairly remote.