Vaneeesa Blaylock - I Rez, Therefore I Am

INSIDE MARK ZUCKERBERG’S GLOBAL BRAIN, 4 April — Meet Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, Vaneeesa Blaylock, and last, but certainly not least, Vaneeesa Blaylock. In almost 3 years, 2 years and 11 months to be precise, 1,068 days to be more precise, since joining Facebook on 2 May 2009, Ms. Blaylock has used a total of 14 different Facebook “profile pix” or “icons” or “avatars.” The shortest was used for a single day, the longest for 501 days. Careful identity crafting? Online laziness? Each of our identity parades tells us something, but what they tell us can be elusive. Until recently only the purview of home scrapbooks and the back of “photo drawers,” today the identity parade on Facebook and elsewhere has become a public spectacle.

My new Facebook friend the fabulous Sanoera Bakhtali of Rotterdam “liked” my FB “Profile Picture” “Album” yesterday, and of course my close, personal friend M. Zuckerberg was nice enough to bring that fact to my email attention. In a simple Pavlovian exercise I, of course, proceeded to “The Site” to review my “identity parade” and marvel at the journey. Is it a “journey?” Who’s to say! Since I wrote just a few days ago about all the Vanessa Blaylocks on Facebook, it seems appropriate enough to look at all the Vaneeesa Blaylock on Facebook now.