On January 21, 2020, Dolly Parton posted a four-panel image on her Instagram with the caption: "Make you a woman who can do it all." "The Dolly Parton Challenge was born.
Dolly Parton Challenge
The challenge went viral immediately (the post remains Parton's most popular photo) and other celebrities joined in. Ellen DeGeneres has released her version of the challenge. Oprah and Sylvester Stallone followed. Even Doug the pug enjoyed it.
What's interesting about the Dolly Parton Challenge is that it conveys: We all have different identities on the internet.
The different identities are orthogonal to Mark Zuckerberg's original social media concept. David Kirkpatrick wrote in The Facebook Effect:
"You have only one identity," he emphasized three times in just one minute in a 2009 interview. He recalls that in Facebook's early years, some people thought that adult users should be provided with "job descriptions" and "hobbies" columns, and Zuckerberg always opposed such a division. "You have different faces – one face to a friend or colleague at work, and another face to other people you are familiar with in your life... It's almost over. He said.
He cited several reasons. "For a person, dual identity is a sign of dishonesty." Zuckerberg defends it morally, but he is also pragmatic, saying: "The transparency of the world today will no longer allow one person to have a dual identity." In other words, even if you want to separate your private life from your professional life, you can't do it because information about you is spreading on the Internet and everywhere else.
Zuckerberg's belief in a single identity led him to demand the use of real names on Facebook. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, online identities were anonymous: on AOL Instant Messenger, you were soccergirl7 or doglover42. By enforcing the use of real names, Facebook suppressed self-expression.
Facebook's standardization runs counter to Myspace's customizability. In the words of Myspace's CTO Dmitry Shapiro:
When you go to a bar, you don't wear a blue-and-white uniform — the "Facebook uniform." You'll put on all sorts of amazing things to stand out. You'll want to be completely different from everyone else. That's where Myspace really comes in. When people talk about missing Myspace, they miss being able to customize their profile.
Myspace is a collage of colors, styles, and fonts. You'll painstakingly craft your profile, from wallpaper to auto-playing music. Before Facebook depersonalized, Myspace gave users a place to be creative and self-expressive.
Today's Gen Z is embracing two new principles of digital identity: customizability and consistency. Customizability reclaims Myspace's self-expression. Digital natives tend to make their products stand out online, rejecting Facebook's blue-and-white standards.
For example, Scout is building 3D virtual rooms that users can fully customize and manage in the browser. Scout founder Zack Hargett refers to Scout as "the Myspace of the Roblox generation."
Young people spend hours a day immersed in digital experiences: Roblox's active users spend an average of 2.6 hours a day on Roblox. In last week's Q2 earnings report, Roblox announced that the platform was becoming less and less concentrated: "In the second quarter of last year, 50% to 80% of Roblox traffic came from the top 10 experiences. That number is now 37 percent. ”
Digital natives are being trained to customize rich, complex virtual worlds. For example, Scapin's allows anyone to create a customized virtual space to hang out with friends or strangers. In some ways, it's roblox for adults. Other startups, such as Dreamworld and Manticore Games, are blurring the boundaries of sandbox games, social networks, and custom virtual spaces.
The return of customizability collides with new tools that allow people to better personalize their digital identities. Companies like Figma, Canva, and Kapwing offer accessible products that allow anyone to use the software for self-expression. Content platforms such as TikTok embed creator tools into applications. No longer needing Adobe Premiere expertise, you can create professional-grade content with mobile editing tools and special effects. Gen Z rejected the boring, restricted online identities encouraged by older social platforms in favor of more personalized forms of online expression.
Another key component of Gen Z digital identity is consistency. The Dolly Parton Challenge marks how older generations — millennials, Gen Xers, baby boomers — are taught to perform differently on different platforms. On LinkedIn, you're professional; on Facebook, you're family-friendly; on Instagram, you're stylish; on Tinder, you're sexy. For Gen Z, cross-platform online identities are consistent; authenticity and self-expression are paramount, not platform-dependent.
Take LinkedIn, for example. Gen Z sees LinkedIn as an intimidating, isolated place for older internet users to brag about. Some Gen Z even made sarcastic posts on LinkedIn, which made people laugh. They are proud to announce their new job at Krusty Krab Restaurant, a "prestigious institution" that will "open a new chapter in [their] lives". Or they announce their new identity as ceo of a multi-billion dollar company.
These posts reflect Gen Z's weariness with social media's quest for status and influence. Digital natives would rather have a single, consistent identity across platforms. Zuckerberg is right, "Your days of having different images of your work friends or co-workers and other people you know may be coming to an end soon." "The level of transparency in the world right now doesn't support one person having two identities." "He was just 10 years early.
New startups are building Gen Z platforms. Polywork, for example, is The Z-Generation LinkedIn — a hybrid social network and professional network that's less daunting and more realistic. It's a single destination to showcase your personality and professional identity.
This builds on the recent trend of "TikTok resumes" — young people looking for jobs through short, expressive videos that introduce their skills and work experience. At first, this practice was informal and user-driven, but TikTok has now formalized the feature.
New startups allow young people to establish consistent, personalized identities on the Internet. Linktree is the leading resume linking site with 12 million users, providing a connected organization for digital identities. Universe is a mobile-first website builder that lets you create a personal website simply using your smartphone. Koji was founded by the former Myspace CTO and lets you launch your own website by assembling LEGO-like components.
The next generation of Internet users will need customizable and consistent digital identities — a reaction to the unified, boring, and inconsistent identities of the past decade. Companies that support the next era of online expression will embrace Gen Z's creativity, self-expression, and unabashed authenticity.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" > the final idea</h1>
It's easy to forget how quickly and dramatically the digital generation moved online. The number of outings in 2015 was lower than that of 8th graders in 2009. Young people surf the internet in their bedrooms; cycling in the community is replaced by playing Fortnite, and going to shopping malls is replaced by swiping Snapchat. This shift has clear negative effects. Social psychologist Jean Twenge writes: "Over the next decade, we may see more adults who only know the emojis that are appropriate for a situation, but do not know the correct facial expressions." (In the next decade, we may see more adults who know just the right emoji for a situation, but not the right facial expression.)
Self-expression is equally important during the digital migration: 73% of Gen Z believe they need more self-expression to live a happy, healthy life. But that expression now needs to be put online. Young people may still wear outlandish clothes to school to rebel, but they will also orchestrate the virtual costumes their avatars wear online. Young people may still have posters and photos on their bedroom walls, but they also decorate their virtual "rooms" for friends to visit — just as millennials do on Myspace.
Last week, Facebook announced Horizon Workrooms, its virtual reality product for workplace collaboration.
When today's young people dominate the workforce – and they will dominate within a decade – these avatars and virtual offices will be personalized, expressive and unique. Personality permeates the professional realm, and in the digital realm of work and socializing, you are "you." Noah Beck, the creator of TikTok with 30 million followers, recently said, "If you look at the most successful people on TikTok, they're doing things that are relevant to themselves. They will never be perfect. They will never exist perfectly. ”（If you look at the most successful people on TikTok, they do relatable things. They’ll never be perfect. They’ll never show a perfect existence.）
Digital identity is no longer an isolated personality, a disconnected act, a clear line between work and play. For those who have lived their entire lives on the internet — who will spend more and more time in the virtual world over the next few decades — online identities are an extension of unadorned offline identities. It's something consistent and authentic, along with careful customization to maximise self-expression.
原文链接：Back to the Future: Myspace and Gen Z Digital Identity