While mostly a mindless dramaction and poor commentary on the Patriot Act, Steven Spielberg’s Eagle Eye did get me thinking. This very fact pissed me off because the last thing I expect to do during a Spielberg movie is think. But, nonetheless, it got me thinking about what identity means in the 21st century, and how much of who we are is what we unintentionally and intentionally share on the Internet.

Back in the day, let’s say Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a russki‘s identity was dictated by the company russki kept, what sort of vodka russki drank, whether  russki was a farmer like Levin or an aristocrat like Karenin.  Sure, gossip trotted as fast as the mail horse, but identities were relatively safe within the gates of  royal estate.  Fast forward to today, let’s say Josh Schwartz’s Gossip Girl, where identity is partially determined by parallels to Tolstoy’s world—dress labels, artisan cocktails and how high you live in the UES.  The rest of these broken teenagers’ identities are dictated by the eponymous Gossip Girl.  Serena “the impulsive blonde bombshell with an Oedipus complex” VanDerWoodsen.  Chuck “bad boy with trust issues more complex than the Brooks Brothers bowtie pattern” Bass.  Bits and pieces of these farcical characters’ actions are delivered via 3G as fast as the male whores can text it, and instantaneously, who they are is published even before they can figure it out for themselves.

Who we are is not as limited to what we write on our Facebook profiles.  No, it’s an amalgamation of all of the platforms on which we can share our thoughts, actions and tastes.  You would know that I love Flanders reds and am lactose intolerant from Yelp.  You would know that I lived in Cairo from my Flickr photos.  You would know that I own a design studio from LinkedIn profile. You would know that I love short stories from GoodReads.  These are all things that anyone—Ashton Kutcher, Rob Blagojevich or “Eagle Eye”—could find out just by searching my name.  This is the digital equivalent of flashing strangers on the street out your window, then blasting (magazine flyer style)  millions of photo copies of your social security card with a chronological list your exes printed on the back.

But besides perhaps not understanding the full breadth of our ASCII actions, why do we volunteer so much of ‘who we are’—our identities—to anonymouses worldwide?  I’d guess that because who we share is not an accurate, or at least not complete, version of our best selves.  We share relatively superficial (albeit useful for an avid stalker) information on a colossal scale.  If we represent ourselves by the pieces of our likes/dislikes, memories through photos and tweets and our communities by our social webs, we avoid the substance that connects the irrelevant dots—our ethics, beliefs and convictions. We are so quick to shed the outermost layer for the virtual vultures in order to protect the innermost layer from ourselves.  The less we are to access this substance, the more who we are is defined by our internet pseudonyms.  The more our tastes become aggregated suggestions from big brother Google searches, music genius Pandora,  and Amazon ‘thought you might likes,’ the further we run from individualism toward assimilation.  As politics are dictated by the media, not vice versa, we become the very Internet effigies that we fabricate.