for the last class (4/24)
Serial Experiments Lain was probably one of my more favorite watches of this class, which is surprising considering its style and theme don’t really align with what I’d typically watch. What I got from this anime was a message about, you guessed it, identity. I also feel like the anime drew a lot of importance on the context of conforming to a “reality” and even touches a little bit on how mass communication really affects individuals. This made me reflect on how virtual realities and networks have affected society, and more relevantly to me, American society.
I feel like American society has a lot of trouble with establishing individualism. I think that once social media and blogs and forums were widespread, people started to publish this public identity that they wanted to be. In a lot of cases, this public identity is something that people consider ideal. People want to show off or display the most interesting aspects of their life, and there’s honestly nothing taboo about that; people want to be interesting. People want to be different, because different makes you stand out and in some cases it is synonymous with special. While I think that being special is not wrong, I don’t think establishing a virtual identity is necessarily healthy.
I think uprooting oneself from actual reality is quite dangerous. Becoming too engulfed online strips someone of who they really are. Think about it, once someone becomes too interested in establishing this persona, who are they? Now, instead of seeing one personality, you see two. There’s a reason behind this though, as people may not actually like who they are. Online, you can just create a new identity and have a new personality that’s entirely filtered and display that people who will never meet you. It’s easier than going through the emotional intensity of daily interaction.
Thanks for reading my blog posts, and I understand this one wasn’t quite as analytical as the others, but I wanted to do something new.













