Sitting in front of my computer, writing my fifth blog as has become the usual. Behind me is my record player, I have decided to spin New York rapper AKAI SOLO’s 2022 album, Spirit Roaming. This album was my formal introduction to him and its safe to say that it made me a fan. With his unique flow and delivery, AKAI SOLO delivers lyrically rich verses on top of very unique beats. The whole album has this interesting jazzy yet modern soundscape to it. Thematically, the album touches upon AKAI’s navigation of the world, hence the title.
I like the word “roaming”, I feel like it implies a certain level of ambiguity while clearly delivering its message. “Roaming” indicates that we are not static, it indicates that we move. Perhaps sometimes we go back to where we started, but we nevertheless don’t stay long. As people, we develop, we change, often who we were is not who we are. With the internet however, we have a sort of “permanent” record of how we have roamed throughout our life in the form of past accounts, past chats or simply past YouTube subscriptions that we have long forgotten about. It is like a box of old pictures and diary pages, just that for some reason, our online memories seem less distant. It is as if the digitalization of our personas has allowed us to dissociate from our past identities. Or, perhaps the digital realm allows us to make many identities, many personas at the same time.
We therefore find ourselves desensitized from the idea that we have and have had many different identities in our lives, specially online. I can now be about 30 different versions of myself depending on the online context I find myself in. I can now create a role, learn the script and perform easier than ever. It is due to that that I wish to explore a bit of the roles I have created and performed online throughout the years.
Beginnings:
I first got into the online world, or more specifically social media, at 13 years old. I was the type of kid to disslike the fact that most of my peers had social media. I am not sure why, perhaps it was just a distaste for whatever was popular, perhaps I genuinely was conflicted by the growing online presence of out little minds. When I moved form my native Mexico however, I decided to download Instagram to keep in touch with my friends and their lives. Once I created my account, I remember I had a very clear vision of what I wanted my account to look like, what I wanted myself to look like. I was obsessed with with football (soccer, voetbal, futbol or however you wish to call it), specifically, I was obsessed with cleats. I was inspired by the Youtubers I had seen, the ones reviewing equipment, talking about the matches and just expressing their love for the sport. I therefore remember taking random pictures of my football shoes, posting them and reviewing them on my page. I talked as if I had a following, as if I was one of my idols.
Of course, that lead me to open up my very own YouTube channel. In that channel, I would take inspiration from my favorite Youtubers. I would try and talk like them, I would promote my channel on my insta, I’d do all those silly things. I believe that was the first online role I played. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t real, not at all, but it sure was constructed. I wanted people to know who I was and to me, that was football.
Unfortunately, I do not have any SCs of my old insta page. I have the same account as then, above it is displayed. We can still see some of the remenants of the old me. My caption makes a reference to my favorite team, Pumas, and you can see I follow a large amount of accounts since I wanted to follow every single player from the teams I supported. Once I quite playing, I deleted all my posts, I deleted everything that reminded me of football. I wanted a clean slate, and in a way, I did get that.
Current Roles:
After I left my football obession behind, I left my insta quite empty. To this day, it is still quite empty, but if you look closely, you can see some details that will indicate the new identity that I try to display. We can see a link to my SoundCloud account, as well as some highlighted stories labelled “Music”. Yes, the football motif has been replaced by music. It is my passion, so it is once again what I construct my insta identity around.
Just like I did at 14 with YouTube, I made a SoundCloud profile and decided to make my own music. Instead of imitating my favorite content creators, I know get inspired by my favorite rappers and producers and try to do my own thing with music. But even if to me, my expression through music is more authentic, it is also constructed. I am trying to build up a certain identity for my music. We can see this through the artist name I chose, through the caption that tries to be ironic, and through the edgy profile picture. It does not represent how most people see me, it is myself that has constructed it. Still, it is a good expression of a part of myself I believe.
From these examples, we can see that I have and still use social media to express a certain role. When I was younger, I used to create a football expert identity. Now, I use it to express my love for music and my own creations as well. But as I said at the beginning of this blog, the internet allows us to have multiple personas at the same time.
Such is the case with things such as Dating App profiles. It is perhaps a more explicit expression of a constructed identity. At least with the prior cases, the image I reflected related to my own personal interests, it was more for me than for other people. In the above case however, my constructed identity is more directly made for others to see. It is made for random people on the app to look at me, get a brief idea of what I believe they believe they would like. It has many layers of pretend. From a picture of a haircut that I no longer have, to a bio that doesn’t say much about me but is funny. It is an evident construction, and yet, it exists with things like my insta account. Of course, these personas are in some ways me, but not fully. The internet allows us to play roles, roles such as the youtuber, the rapper or the normal dude. All existing for different reasons, some being more real than others, most of them being a bit of both.
Song Rec of the Week:
This week I am of course recomending my favorite song from AKAI SOLO’s Spirit Roaming. It is the final trakc of the project, produced by the incredible underground producer Messiah Muzik. His soft drum and melody based beats allow this track to take on so much atmosphere. This track also features Armand Hammer, a duo that I love and have mentioned a lot already. This song is truly beautiful, all three rapers bring some amazing pen game.
Song: Upper Room by AKAI SOLO, featuring Armand Hammer
Cool!! Such an entertaining and relatable read. Very often people refer to their past social media identities as something to cringe at (I am a victim of it myself), but I find it quite charming and innocent in a sense. Especially because, as you mentioned, most of the social media presence we held when we were younger was about what excited us and not as much about what might excite someone else. I also think that we have a very cool opportunity to preserve our old versions through the digital space and maybe look back at them and reflect. I’m sure older generations went through different phases in the same way, but it wasn’t as easily recorded. Sometimes I stumble upon notes on my phone and giggle at the things I found important enough to write down at the beginning of high school. Or I get a notification from the Cartoon Network fan page (lol) I made on Facebook while in middle school and it does make me feel extremely nostalgic and happy that I didn’t delete it once I decided that being a CN crazy fan was not my thing anymore.
I do feel grateful about social media giving its users an opportunity to to express themselves and the coolest thing is that you don’t need to be consistent – everything you have shared can be wiped off (seemingly anyway) and start from the beginning with a new vision.