But Who Am I?
Now, there used to be natural limits to this type of status-altering. Clothing, manners, and company could alter a perception of someone, and so in works like "Pygmalion" or "She's All That", a type of identity is constructed by changing the trappings. Eventually reality sets in, but part of the trappings becomes part of reality so the person is partially accepted even after they "fooled" someone. There is of course a limit to this sort of identity alteration to make most of us feel that we're not being fooled: money. Clothing and company takes quite a bit of money to change how we are accepted, and manners often require a commitment that coincides with wealth and leisure. Even when given as an opportunity for a poor person to redefine themselves, a rich, knowledgeable (and socially-conscious) benefactor is present.
But what of computers? There's an initial economic and cultural cost, true, but not nearly to the degree that any of the aforementioned requirements have. If someone presents themselves as rich, thoughtful, intelligent, and suave for us, what if they're just tricking us? Not only that, but the bridge between someone being themselves and their avatar is considered wider in the computer world than in the previous analog switching of before.
It is behind this indignation of being tricked that we hide behind when our innate prejudices against race, sex, attractiveness, and mannerisms are found out. When we realize that girl that we were interested in is black instead of white, we jump behind this violation of "honesty" so we don't have to admit that it would have been a deal-breaker the moment she mentioned it. When we realize that a commenter we admire might not be the person they say they are, we suddenly take back our praise for their intellectual wordsmithing. Whereas the computer world could have pulled down the very concepts of identity and expose our prejudices so that we can fix them, the modern computer world has orbited around authenticity and honesty as ways to not. They are narrowly defined, so moving things around is fine, but fabrication is not (much like a resume).
Turkle, writing in the mid-nineties, wrote her article before this advent in skepticism, when the sheer playing with of identity was the point to online interactions. Danger and joy mixed into an experience that gave its users something that was inaccessible before. Then comes the dark cloud on the horizon, where Dibbell's witnessing an online rape reminds users that there are limits, limits that should be respected. In addition, it's a warning: don't believe the illusion, don't put your heart into it. You're a fool or worse if you do. Nakamura's exploration of WoW gold-farming reveals our present age where we see right through avatars to what's behind them. No longer do we read that someone is a genderless crossroad god or a rabbit or a great hero. They are simply a person sitting in front of a computer, playing a game. Digitally constructed identities are stripped away, but not socially constructed ones as race and sex determine what we say to people. We now have a privileging of engaging with others stripped down identities while we still wear the mask of our pueduonymity or anonymity. The problem is, we just can't decided upon identity and what it means. We insist on integrity from others, but irony is what compels us on ourselves and them. We see any deviation from what you "are" as lying, but we know that we would be pilloried being as we are, and aware that we are shifting one social dominance for another. For those, like Turning, that simply were who they were, we destroyed. In the end, we watch magic tricks needing to be impressed, even as we scorn those who's tricks can be figured out, or worse, don't perform for us at all.