Chris just sent me a link to this fascinating New York Magazine article on how young people are using the internet to build their identity online.

I was, to some extent, part of the phenomenon of exhibitionist, obsessively-self-documenting teens on Livejournal. I started off on Livejournal writing plain, dull, what-I-had-for-lunch journal entries (FYI, I now do this on Twitter).

As I connected with other Livejournal users, I realised that I could tailor my posts to garner more comments (the cherished stamp of popularity). Comments motivated my writing, and I wrote to amuse, entertain, and to provoke commentry. I enjoyed having readers who commented on my posts as much as I enjoyed writing the posts.

I wasn’t as as obsessed with it as some. Some contacts on Livejournal would document themselves with endless photographs. And then I remember a community popping up on Livejournal, sometime in 2003, called “Nonuglies”. To join this community, wannabe members were asked to submit a journal entry to the community featuring three photos of themselves. Existing members would then vote “yes” or “no” on whether the applicant was beautiful enough to be accepted to the site. After the board had cast their votes, they would be counted. Accepted members were officially “non-ugly”. Rejects were hounded off the site.

Nonuglies was incredibly cold, elitist, and nasty. The original community shut down after a few months, and was reborn in various guises. And at the time, Nonuglies was very popular: loved and hated in equal measure — a squirming petri-dish of human nature.

What’s really amazing to me is the levels of self-exhibitionism the internet allows. Livejournal gives teens a platform to write about their lives, and garner popularity from it. We have self-made YouTube stars (leading to real-life, six-figure TV contracts). We have people documenting their lives in visual minutiae on their Flickr photo accounts. Facebook allows people to build an entire persona. Chris Pirillo streams live from his desk 24/7.

Who’s watching all this? What motivates it?

The “invisible audience” is an interesting term and is brought up in the NY Magazine article linked above. It really is possible to be famous on the internet, and I think it’s the motivation to be seen that motivates this self-documentation. Teenagers in particular battle for a sense of individuality, and they are making use of these online tools to do it. Inhibition is overcome in the process. On one hand, this self-confidence is great; on the other, it could be self-sabotaging — for starters, Google might be unforgiving to the data-trail you left throughout your confused teenage years. Nevertheless: the desire for self-invention in young people is there; the internet has given them the tools.