In this week’s post,  I will discuss Lisa Nakamura’s article,  “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet”. In this article, she begins with talking about a dog that is pretending to be a human on the Internet. This may be a silly cartoon, however, it speaks volume about the kind of people that are willing to lie and deceive others for their own amusement. Nakamura explains this by writing “The technology of the Internet offers its participants unprecedented possibilities for communicating with each other in real time, and for controlling the conditions of their own self-representations in ways impossible in face to face interaction(Nakamura, 1995). She is proving my point that people use the internet in any way they can and that people sometimes will use it to their advantage to manipulate and put on a facade in front of others. For example, this show “Catfish” explains how this is done. People pretend to be other people online and get into relationships with people for years although they are lying about who they actually are. The show continues on with the “catfish” being exposed for their lies. This is a modern example of Lisa Nakamura’s quote about how the internet provides opportunities for people to lie about themselves.

Lisa Nakamura, “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet” in Works and Days, Volume 13, 181-193, 1995