Hello, My name is Whitney, and I am a social schizophrenic.

"Work Whitney and Out-of-Work Whitney are completely different people"

 The way I speak and present myself at work, very much so varies to social situations outside of work. When I began reading Death of Social Schizophrenia, in chapter six of Socialnomics How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do, I was instantly intrigued. I totally agree with the notion that "most of us had at least two personas: a work persona and a nonwork persona. And many of us had several personas: social, work, family, coach, charity, and so on." 

I believe my online personas are a fairly great representative of who I am as a whole, whereas my "at work" persona is much more constricted and pleasant…as it should be. I believe this relates because at my job it is prohibited for managers of any kind to engage in activity with employees outside of work, this includes social media. The problem I ran into was my General Manager completely disregarded this rule and would constantly seek employees out on social media. Eventually this manager began to request/follow me on multiple networks and I had a really hard time deciding what to do about it. I generally like to keep my perosnall life separate from my professional life outside of general small talk. I was not afraid the manager would see something inappropriate, I just wasn't comfortable with them peering into my social life outside of work. So, I made the decision to block them. Flat out. I felt no good could come from it. As I mentioned before, my work persona is much more contrived, and I could feel that spilling over into my personal life. The book states, "Without a doubt, it is somewhat daunting to always be on one's best behavior. It is mentally taxing to have fewer avenues to blow off steam or to always maintain a perfect persona."

In this video below, Soraya Darabi discusses Multiple E-dentity disorder. She tells the audience, “I’m very different on Twitter than on Facebook, I have a professional self on LinkedIn, and a personal self on Tumblr.” I totally relate to this. For me, each social media platform is used for a different purpose. I feel as though my personality is threaded through each social media channel, showcasing different aspects of it. 

I think the idea of social schizophrenia is intriguing, but unlike the book I don't believe the transparency of new technology kills this notion. I agree with Darabi, in the aspect that I believe it does create a new challenge in blending each persona together. I keep my social networks open to the public so I know any one can access them and see what is being posted, be it my Great-aunt, manager, or stranger in the street. Therefore, the challenge is keeping each network personality consistent  with the image I present in public. 

Do you think you suffer from social media schizophrenia? Do you think displaying different aspect of your personality can be difficult to keep al of them  consistent with your public and professional life?