What I’m saying is that it is NECESSARY for us to have different social selves, depending on the front, because otherwise we would be overwhelmed. And I’m also arguing that we need to do that in the virtual space as well as the face-to-face space.

This is not about “judging” people. It is about examining how social life is organized. Berger and Luckman tell us that we have “typifications” or tried and true roles, that we understand and use in everyday life.

We do this not because we think it’s “right” to treat someone at the drycleaner’s in a particular way, but because it is convenient. We could not possibly take the time every social moment to figure out, “How should I treat this person? Should I shake their hand? Should I kiss them?”

Beacon does deserve to be criticized, but not for this reason. It is morally wrong to co-opt someone’s identity for market purposes. They did this not because they are “disrupting” anything — they are actually cementing market values. In fact, Beacon is REGRESSIVE.

We can continue to have the strange culture where we let ourselves see only selective facades of a person, maybe believing somewhere in our naive minds that that is the only facade they have, and then judge them negatively for diversions from it. Or maybe we can learn to become more accepting of each other’s identities, and learn to appreciate the uniqueness that shines through more the more thorough a picture we have of someone.

I would also hesitate to criticize Beacon so sharply. Making mistakes and stirring up controversy are necessities of creativity, disruptive technologies and creating progressive change. Beacon has called for a way distinguish between different online audiences within one central social networking platform. Admit it, another problem of these social networking tools is that there are so many of them, and if you want one to represent each of your different “selfs”, it could quickly become overwhelming. Now, you can use Facebook to create an identity, as well as control who sees which facades.

Sorry, I had to play devil’s advocate…. hate one-sided arguments.