How Diary / Memoir / Poet Jane Compares With Social Media Jane

Abstract

In this creative submission, presented via lyric essay, I examine/identify many aspects of persona, including ones developed through social media use, while writing poetry, in diary/memoir writing, in visual art, and in academic writing. This essay considers how my social media persona differs from the reality, as an autistic person, as expressed through memoir writing. The essay is divided into chapters, touching upon the persona as an asset, my dependence on social media, trivial online quizzes, and speaking truth through #hashtags. I wondered how much I might be trying to ‘sell’ myself to the world. I looked for differences in self as I shifted between personal memoir, Facebook and Twitter. Between those lines, I wonder if I have written the ‘real’ me. The notion of “researching your own life” (Forché & Gerard 2001, p. 45) is of interest to me and this essay concerns itself with who I might be on social media. If “a social media profile is meant to be a representation of an individual” (Humphrey 2017), am I speaking on behalf of myself? I would hope this essay reveals how important it is for an individual to ‘story’ themselves. In choosing excerpts from these versions of self, then placing them together, I discover where the truth of ‘me’ exists and reveal how I have found the courage / desire to understand life through the written word.