GM Readers,
Today we have some musings around a commonly asked question: “who are you”?
While this essay is not directly about Web3 or technology per say, answering “who are you” on the Internet is hard, but becoming increasingly important to do so. Especially as the Internet continues to evolve.
As with our other musings essays, we hope this essay brings more questions than it does answers.
Hope you enjoy!
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We often answer the simple question of “who are you” with labels.
Often conversations around “who are you” goes something like this.
In a professional setting, responses usually start with the role you have, the company you work for and where you went to school. Maybe you sprinkle in a little bit of, ‘I do this for fun’ to mix it up, but largely the labels are professional.
In a social setting (like when you’re meeting people for the first time at a wedding or event), responses usually center around how you’re connected to the organizer of the event. ‘I am the best friend of the groom’, or ‘my friend suggested I attend this speaker’s event,’ etc.
When you are with people closer to you, such as your friends or family, you’ll go a little bit deeper. When this group asks “who are you”, you respond with deeper statements like, ‘I am a husband, a brother, an entrepreneur.’ You might even throw in some (more personal) adjectives: ‘I am curious, I am ambitious’.
And sometimes you might talk about activities you actually like doing in lieu of labeling yourself as a noun. So you might say, ‘I like spending time with family, I like nature.’
This seemingly simple question of “who are you” is actually one of the hardest questions to answer.
Wearing Labels
When answering the question “who are you,” we define the concept of “self” by the labels we wear.
We all love wearing labels because with enough labels we feel unique. And we all want to feel unique.
We organize ourselves in society with labels (or any thing/variable/ segmentation that helps us identify ourselves).
Segmenting ourselves based on labels is our way of organizing to find local maximums. So when you wear a label, you are implicitly saying “I want to be part of this group.” You can band together and connect with others who also wear the same / similar labels. You get to invoke “we” when your specific group’s ideals are called into question or you get to share in the win when the spotlight is on them.
It’s a bit ironic that in society, we unite through labels, yet we also want some separation from the next person so that we may feel special. Perhaps, we only appreciate our individuality in the presence of others.
Ship of Theseus and Impermanence
If we take away those labels we wear, are we still the person our labels describe us to be?
If I ask “who are you”, and you tell me you are a businessperson, but then your company shuts down and you don’t have a job anymore, most of us will still say “I am still me.” The labels seem to cover a very small surface area to answer the question of “who are you”.
Let’s take the Ship of Theseus thought experiment as one illustrative example.
Theseus’ ship was preserved through the years by replacing its wooden parts over time. After enough years, all the original parts of the ship were no longer a part of the ship.
The thought experiment asks: if you replace every part of the ship, is it still the same ship?
Similarly, if you remove, change, and / or update the labels (e.g. change jobs, homes, hair color, etc) you wear, are you still “you”?
For many of us, the obvious answer is yes. So labels are clearly insufficient because they’re a static snapshot at the moment. They don’t capture the constantly changing human experience.
Well then, how do we explain who we are?
If we look at something like a good plate of food, we see it’s a derivative of its ingredients. The ingredients are a derivative of the thing that came before them. The thing that came before that, is a derivative of the thing that came before that and the external forces that acted upon it (i.e. the farmer having to water the crops to get them to harvest, then to get them to processing, etc.)
This is the concept of impermanence, which says that nothing is permanent and there isn’t an absolute idea of the self — instead everything is a function of a bunch of other things and is constantly evolving.
That’s why it’s so hard to attribute which ingredient makes a plate of food good. On some level, they all do.
In this model of impermanence, our present self is a function of our past self, plus any other additions we added to get to our present self. These additions are not merely simple things like what we ate yesterday (certainly those are included), but also all the actions we took, all the external influences on us, the people we are with, the thoughts we have — the labels we wear.
Everything in the world ends up being a function of something else. We don’t exist outside of the system. The self is not some objectively identifiable thing that exists in a vacuum.
So what does this realization tell us?
Labels can be useful for organizing, but a single label does not define who you are.
But this realization is easier to say than to internalize. And defining our identity and answering the question “who are you” only gets more complex on the Internet.
Who are you, on the Internet?
On the internet, we have infinitely more ways to answer the question “Who Are You”.
The internet is an endless digital space with infinite design options. It is a place of endless abundance without the constraints that comes from the physical world. In the physical world, there are things about your identity that are pre-set — like how you look, where you were born, etc.
Online, identity is a blank canvas. Identity is programmable.
Anyone can design and build their character however they see fit to best represent themselves.
We’ve written about digital avatars before. Our identity and reputation online is quickly being abstracted to an online account (like a username) or an avatar image (like those use in an NFT).
The online version of the Ship of Theseus paradox looks something like this: if you owned an NFT (or account, username, etc.) that represents your brand and reputation, but then you sell that NFT (or account, username, etc.) to another owner, does the brand and reputation (aka the online identity) transfer? Is it the same?
(We’ve explored how non-transferability is a feature before).
Humans want to be unique. The unique parts of us (whether natural or chosen) often drive a large part of the answer to “who are you.”
Yet on the Internet, those factors that make us unique can be copied and re-created easily.
As we spend more and more time online, and attention spans continue to be razor thin, defining and projecting our individuality becomes extremely important. Both on a functional level like getting work done professionally in a digital first world and on a meta level like knowing what makes you, you.
A digital world gives us another canvas. But with endless choice, we have our work cut out for us to choose how to represent ourselves.
At heart, this is about individual identity and collective identity. And how they relate to each other.
So… who are you?