the artifical persona and transparency: revisited

One of my major themes, at the start of this blog, was the importance of persona as a medium, both in day-to-day life, and on a broader scale. What is interesting is, completely independent of this, I have ended up working in Public Relations. I am in the persona business, and I feel I have to explain how I can reconcile that, with the earlier ideas of artificial persona that dominated my writing here.

Persona is both the first, and most vital medium we have to express ourselves, our ideologies, and our agendas. It’s also the first medium we learn to manipulate, although many do not see it this way. Persona Management is a skill we all develop to varying degrees. We keep emotions, or opinions, to ourselves. We carefully monitor our expression, actions, tone, and words to make sure we convey only certain information.

In this sense, all persona is artificial.

My commentary on artificial persona, however, was the idea of pushing beyond this, and creating a public persona that was more carefully managed than an actual identity. Monitoring all output, all traceable action, and making all decisions that relate to public information based on maintaining that desired persona. The purpose of this was as a response to the state of privacy in our modern world. Everything is public, and nothing is private, assuming a suitable lack of anonymity.

This approach requires subjugating ‘actual’ identity for ‘projected’ persona, and therefore is entirely unacceptable to the average person. Some would argue that there are examples of fully artificial persona in the celebrity community, and I would have to agree this isn’t out of the realm of possibility. But by and large, all a famous person is doing is the standard practice of projecting a ‘best-of-self’ persona, and ignoring / downplaying negative aspects of one’s identity.

Transparency, in some ways, if the opposite of artificiality. It demands making all information available, in an attempt to earn goodwill – an ‘open’ identity means that negative aspects observed are more likely to be forgiven. The issue here, is that no sane person would want to be completely transparent. Instead we deal with the illusion of transparency, and the hope that it will keep people from digging much deeper.

My current theory is persona management. It’s a selective mix of transparency and artificiality, while operating on what my inner English Major demands I call a thesis. Core truth must be preserved, otherwise the effect will ‘feel’ off. The key to artificiality is that it be a perfect simulacra – this is next to impossible in real life. People notice the cracks. So, the logical choice is to be open about some of the cracks, those that are integral to believability, and to operate on a less transparent basis when those flaws overwhelm the thesis. The core idea behind artificial persona was the creation of a consistent message and whole, one that was reflected by all elements. The creation of that with the inclusion of beneficial truths AND beneficial but true flaws, creates a more believable image.

That believable, positive persona is what matters, and what most communication is an attempt to create. The right field theory on how to do that is, to me, priceless. That, in a nutshell, is why I’m rambling on about it.

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