Who am I?

I've often talked about Facebook and MySpace when addressing the topic of identity and technology. As I was watching a stellar LifeTime movie tonight ("The Party Never Stops" starring Nancy Travis and Sara Paxton) my roommates and I started cheering for the girl to die. It sounds horrible, but if you watch LifeTime movies, you totally understand. Anyway, the end of the movie states, "Even though classes were over, 100 people attended Shanna's candlelight vigil." I connected to this by saying that when I die, I should hope that more than 100 people would come together to remember me. I have 7 roommates, that's almost a tenth of my 100 person minimum. So, to get this show on the road, I said that if I were to die, I want one of my roommates to break into Facebook, reactivate my account and send everyone an invitation from me inviting them all to my funeral. This was followed by a lot of inappropriate laughter, evolution of ideas and more inappropriate comments and laughter.
I really have a point, I swear. So, last week during our class discussion, I admit to getting a bit heated. To make a decision that there is a point at which is considered handicapping to use technology is a little absurd. I've tried to see the other side, and I can see that now. But I still think that some people really need the help to be more social and to meet people and recover from traumatic experiences. When you make an online persona, does that really make you a cyborg? Or is it just testing the waters in being someone you don't know if that's who you are? I made the statement that online chatting is a lot like adolescence: A person tries on a lot of different personalities to find the one that is most comfortable and what you want to be.
I think a better point that was made was by someone who said that saying a person shouldn't use online personas as a method of coping is comprable to saying that a person shouldn't have a pacemaker. Emotional dependence and physical dependence are one in the same. Neither can be overcome without help.
So maybe I missed the point to the reading notes post this week, but I had to make a point that does coincide with the comment regarding the overuse of technology: What if someone died and you were invited to the funeral via Facebook? I think that would be excessive use of technology. But on that same note, maybe it's a coping mechanism. When my a few of my friends' parents passed, they couldn't vocalize it; he/she had to email the close circle of friends. In my conclusion, I have to say that an outrageous example like the Facebook funeral would be excessive, but if someone needs to be a pretend person in an online chatroom, should they really be penalized for that?