Self-Expression
published
Twenty years ago I wrote about identity and self-expression. That post was written upon the launch of the Gravatar service by Tom Preston-Werner, in which he offered an iPod Nano for the best written blog post advocating for Gravatars. I went far beyond just writing a blog post: I wrote a WordPress plugin! I won the contest, and I enjoyed that iPod Nano for a couple of years.
Re-reading that post, two decades on, my opinion hasn’t changed too much. I still think that self-expression is fluid and flexible. User names and avatars are – and should be – as interesting and diverse as the human beings behind them. In the year 2025 SwitftOnSecurity, a very popular infosec advocate, uses an anthropomorphized airplane as their icon (to say nothing of their username!). Normal people regularly change their social media display names to match the season or play on a pun or a flashpoint of popular culture. Each of these is itself an expressive act, and contributes to the rich body of our collective self-expressions.
In the years since I wrote my post online discourse has changed a bit. Back then, it was novel to have a blog. GMail and Facebook were only a year old, and Twitter was still a year from launching. The notion of “online identity” hadn’t really evolved beyond one’s email address. The mainstreaming of social media really changed the way we communicate, as well as the way we present ourselves to those with whom we communicate. The proliferation of new top-level domain names like .lol and and .party have seen a lot of creative expressive uses.
There’s probably a lot to unpack regarding the difference between “expression” and “communication”. There’s a lot of overlap, to be sure, but there’s also a lot that doesn’t overlap.
On the whole, I think it’s wonderful that so many people can express themselves so easily now. Just like the printing press changed how ideas moved around the globe, so too did the Internet. I’ve enjoyed expressing myself on this blog for the last twenty six years, and I hope to keep doing it for at least another twenty six.
You should get your own blog, and express yourself!