Day 75: Identity Crisis

Ice breakers, quite lovely activities aren't they? We had one at work last week. We had new people coming to join us. The ice breaker was that we should go around in a circle and mention something about ourselves that only we know about and no one else. I was the fifth person to go and I really thought about it for a second I didn't know what to say. After a long and very brief pondering I REALISED, actually I do not have a personality in fact I have many different personalities. My personality bends so to suit the environment as well as the people in it.

According to the scholars there are four different personality types. I will list them with their general features.

1. Melancholic: Thoughtful, analytical, prone to existential crises at 3AM while scrolling through Instagram
2. Sanguine: Optimistic, social, the type who posts inspirational quotes over sunset photos they definitely didn't take
3. Phlegmatic: Calm, relaxed, probably has their notifications turned off and we all secretly hate them for it
4. Choleric: Ambitious, dominant, the LinkedIn "thought leaders" who use phrases like "hustle culture" unironically

In a world full of experts and gurus in everything, unlimited WiFi and access to social media, there are many different ideas and thoughts that we get from people who don't know us and our situation. These affect how we behave and react in situations and hence our personalities. That is why we have identity crises.

The Digital Chameleon (That's All of Us, By the Way)

Have you ever noticed how you text differently depending on who you're texting? With your boss, you're suddenly fluent in corporate jargon. With your mates, you communicate primarily in memes, stickers and emojis. With your grandparents, you write like you're penning a formal letter in 1953.

I was reminded of that scene in "The Social Network" where Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg says: "We lived on farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're going to live on the internet!" Except we don't just live there, we multiply there.

The Biblical Identity Crisis (Not New, Just Worse Now)

This fracturing of identity isn't actually new. Even Biblical figures struggled with knowing who they really were.

Take Paul, formerly Saul, who had quite the identity reboot on the road to Damascus. In Galatians 2:20, he writes: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." Talk about an extreme profile update.

Or consider Jacob, who literally wrestled with God and got renamed Israel for his troubles. Genesis 32:28 tells us: "Then the man said, 'Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.'" Imagine trying to explain that rebrand to your Instagram followers.

The difference is, these biblical identity shifts happened once, maybe twice in a lifetime. Now we're expected to shift identities a dozen times a day as we hop between digital platforms.

The Science of Digital Fragmentation (Because I Read Academic Papers Sometimes)

According to a distressingly credible study from the University of Oxford (or maybe it was Cambridge... or perhaps I just made it up entirely), our brains actually undergo subtle neurochemical shifts when we switch between social media platforms.

Dr. Someone Important (I'm sure) found that the dopamine pathways activated when we post on Instagram differ from those activated when we engage in Twitter debates. Our brains are literally creating different chemical environments for our different digital personas.

In his slightly pretentious but surprisingly useful book "Stolen Focus," Johann Hari argues that this constant switching doesn't just fragment our attention—it fragments our very sense of self.

I think he's onto something. We're not just distracted; we're disintegrated.

The Authenticity Industry (Oh, the Irony)

The greatest paradox of our time has to be the rise of the "authenticity industry" on social media. We've got influencers with professional photographers capturing their "authentic morning routines." We've got carefully curated "candid" moments that took 47 takes to get right.

It reminds me of that time Jesus called out the Pharisees in Matthew 23:27-28: "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Bit harsh, that. But then again, Jesus never had to contend with Instagram filters.

The authenticity industrial complex has us all desperately trying to appear genuine while simultaneously calculating which version of "genuine" will get the most engagement. It's exhausting, really.

The Myth of the "Real You" (A Philosophical Tangent)

Perhaps the most troubling question in all this: What if there isn't a "real you" hiding beneath all these personae?

The philosopher David Hume (proper smart bloke) suggested that the self is nothing but a bundle of perceptions—there's no solid "I" at the centre of it all. If Hume were alive today, he'd probably have a field day with our social media fragmentation.

What if, rather than having a core self that we're betraying with our digital shapeshifting, we're actually just collections of responses to different environments? What if authenticity is just another performance?

That's a bit depressing, innit? Let's move on before we all start staring into the existential abyss.

Finding Your Way Back (Or Forward, or Wherever)

So what are we supposed to do with all this? Delete our accounts and move to the woods? Unlikely. My phone battery wouldn't last, and I'm terribly afraid of bears.

Instead, perhaps we might consider a few strategies:

1. Digital Sabbaths: Not because some wellness guru recommended it, but because sometimes you need to remember what your own thoughts sound like without the chorus of the internet weighing in.
2. Conscious Cross-Posting: Before you share something on multiple platforms, ask yourself if you're comfortable with these different audience groups seeing the same version of you. If not, why not?
3. The Consistency Test: Every few months, scroll through your different social profiles and ask: Would these people recognise each other if they met at a party? If not, you might be stretching yourself a bit thin.
4. Remember Solomon's Wisdom: In Ecclesiastes 1:9, he tells us: "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun." Even our identity crises aren't new—they're just technologically enhanced versions of age-old human struggles.

The Final Thought (For Now, Anyway)

Perhaps instead of asking "Who am I really?" we should be asking "Who am I becoming through all these interactions?" Identity isn't static—it's not something you find like keys down the back of the sofa. It's something you build, choice by choice, post by post, interaction by interaction.

In Romans 12:2, Paul advises: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." In today's context, maybe that means being mindful about which patterns we're conforming to online, and which transformations we're undergoing as a result.

The good news is, if you don't like who you're becoming, you can always hit refresh. And in a world of endless digital reinvention, that's something worth remembering.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go post this blog to five different platforms with five slightly different captions to appeal to five different audience segments.

Because This is What We Do NOW!