So Much Cooler Online

I watched Brad Paisley’s Online music video, a song making fun of some people’s online personas. Jason Alexander is the nerd in the video, a man who looks to be in his forty’s. He works as a pizza delivery man by day and online geek by night. He lives with his parents and in his glory days was in the band. He has glasses, pretends he is in Star Wars, and epitomizes the essence of being a nerd. Offline Jason Alexander is living a fairly undesirable life. Online is a different story.
Online he is single (in the independent, the girls are lucky I am not locked down kind of single), rich, and handsome. In Paisley’s words he is six foot five, and looks damn good. He is a playboy who gets all the girls, and in fact three-way chats because one girl isn’t enough. Alexander’s online identity is much more desirable than his offline self.
The conclusions I get from the music video is that Alexander has a void that needs to be filled. He wants to know what it feels like to be considered cool, to get attention, and feel wanted and popular. The void of popularity is shown by his explanation that he was in GQ. The longing to feel different, to feel improved, explains why he creates this fantasy world. Even his dad longs to fill a void. His online void filler involves being friends with attractive women. He is married to an old woman, and the acceptance he receives from being friends with young beautiful women fills the void of what his partner is lacking.
Society may sometimes use the internet as a way to let their creativity run wild, and feel emotions unobtainable in real life. We can use the internet to get things out of life that we otherwise couldn’t. Alexander being a dork shows the enormous dependence on the internet, because numerous voids are apparent. I hope that we can continue to see videos like these and look at them as humorous, for it would be sad to see our alter-egos grow as the internet does.
Wood and Smith talk about interactivity being a characteristic of online communication. We can communicate very easily, and because of this among other reasons the internet is obviously incredibly prominent in society. We can interact through synchronicity, communicating instantaneously. The ease of communication is fantastic, but I fear that the lack of face to face interaction could allow these dream worlds to continue. Our identities online are not who we are. I see the identities some create match that of a kid pretending to be superman. We should continue to interact as similarly as we do in real life. Creativity is great, but we aren’t superman. In using the internet we must try to stay as true to ourselves as possible, or we may lose some of the aspects that define ourselves. The interactivity with the internet is fascinatingly easy, and I hope that the ease continues to be a good thing.

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