Choosing how to portray yourself has always been one of the most intriguing aspects of the online world.
In the physical realm, most people are boxed into their personas by their physical characteristics, government-issued identification, behaviors and relationships with their family, friends and coworkers. It isn’t easy to make a radical break with a persona you’ve been inhabiting for decades.
Yet the internet allows people to do just that. A new avatar, a funny nickname (often a parody of something from real life) and a specific outlook are all it takes to create a new identity. And it offers a thrilling sense of freedom from the bonds of daily social life.
Since the rise of social media, businesses have begun to inhabit online personas in order to meet people where they are. Just look at the “influencer” Lil Miquela, a digitally-created robot that mimics a traditional influencer and has 1.5 million Instagram followers.
While it may seem like a strange to many people, the companies investing in virtual avatars are betting big on a simple concept—that the future will be virtually mediated.
Here’s why this trend will only continue picking up speed:
People are increasingly interested in digital personalities.
Everyone has their own personas cultivated over the years by experiences and what you choose to pursue. You may change it slightly in different situations—you probably act differently in a boardroom than you do in a bar—but people tend to see you according to a singular persona.
If you want to speak to something else, you have to change your persona. For instance, I like traveling to conferences and speaking on blockchain and emerging tech, but if I also want to speak on health and wellness, I have to think about whether people can handle that shift in my identity. They expect that I somehow tie blockchain with health and wellness, like I did when I wrote about blockchain and the Keto Diet.
But virtual worlds give people the opportunity to expand into a greater range of self-expression through digital personalities.
Imagine having a digital “persona” involved in each of the areas you’re interested in engaging with. For example, some of my personas are Blockchain Sam, Skydiver Sam, Leather-Jacket Wearing-Daily-Uniform Sam and Newfie-Loving Sam.
Developing multiple personas isn't difficult—many people already do this to some extent, tailoring their profiles and personalities within different platforms, filters and niches. A digital personality simply takes that one step further, creating an identity so you can interact in a unique manner with each group you’re involved in.
In this world, where you might manage multiple “identities” or “personas” on multiple closed-loop niche ecosystems, self-sovereign identity becomes increasingly more important. One one hand, new platforms will want to ensure that bot armies and click farms are not creating hundreds of fake profiles for the sake of fabricated engagement. On the other hand, these platforms will want to embrace and engage with new means and methods of self-expression.
Currently, several companies, such as Microsoft, UPort and Civic, are working on self-sovereign identity, in addition to the businesses recently covered by Breaker Mag.
Investors are already betting big on virtual personalities and influencers.
Web 2.0 was consumed by social media, which meant many investors created an entire investment thesis around large-scale social networks.
The idea was to create something that could reach a large audience for mass adoption. But as Web 3.0 comes into view, there’s a movement toward de-platforming and focusing on smaller niche customer segments. Rather than a single platform like Facebook where a person can interact with multiple groups, for example, the goal now may be to have different platforms for gamers, new moms or football fanatics—and let people engage with them using various personas.
To take it a step further, there will not only be multiple niche platforms but multiple transmedia franchises existing across various niche platforms—from gaming to media and content. Lil Miquela exemplifies this best, as she exists as a narrative, social media influencer and writer who may one day end up in her own game universe.
Or consider when in February 2019, Verge reported on Marshmello, a DJ, performing a concert in Fortnite. Almost 12 years prior, in 2007, English DJ Fatboy Slim reportedly performed a concert for a select group of inhabitants in the Virtual World, Second Life.
As transmedia franchises, platforms and individual online identities become more complex, the question is, how can one business tackle all these different segments?
Right now, many companies rely on influencers to promote their brands. A traditional influencer’s job description might look something like this: fly around the world, take beautiful photos, put them on social media and make sure everything you do revolves around the specific business you happen to be adept at.
By its very nature, the job precludes effectively running several different personas. That would simply be beyond what most people are capable of.
That’s why the tech industry is trending toward virtual influencers. A company may no longer need to use a large number of human influencers who are pigeonholed into one or two areas. They can simply create as many influencers as they need to cover a wide range of digital personas. Lil Miquela and her friends are just the beginning.
As programmed intelligence and personas increase, the definition of reality is shifting.
Constructed people and identities are already blurring the line between what’s real and what’s fake.
Chatbots and software with personalities have been with us for quite a while, but companies are beginning to put a face on the technology. Think of Hanson Robotics’ Sophia the blockchain-based robot keynoting a conference alongside Tim Draper.
As someone entrenched in the tech industry, my fear is that these virtual identities will be used as a way to increasingly distract people by keeping them engaged in a world that encourages complacency. If you look at how easy it was for the YouTube star Poppy to build a following by creating strange, robotic videos, you can get a sense for the issues that may arise once there are thousands of custom virtual influencers aiming to increase their audiences.
If people begin to feel like they’ve lost the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what’s fake, that’s going to create a fundamental shift in their perceptions of reality. And that point in time isn’t far off. Just look at how easy it is to create fake faces or fabricated newscasters using machine learning. It's clear that emerging technology is moving faster than most people are prepared to keep up with.
Which is why the industry and consumers need to have hard discussions about how far both individuals and companies can go when it comes to identity, pseudonymity and how identity is managed across platforms. Because you’re going to be interacting with more and more digital personas online in the near future—perhaps, sooner than you think.
