Notes
About The About Page
I secretly love writing About pages, and I think I’ve figured out why.
About pages are a way of defining who we are online. We’re usually defined by what other people think of our work or our personality, but we don’t really have control over what other people think. The About page gives us an opportunity to define a canonical version of ourselves for other people to base their opinions of us on.
I think that the kind of person that suffers from OSCD also writes their About page as the person they want to be, and not totally as themselves. I think we really like the idea of being known as the guy who exclusively uses fine-tip ball-point pens and Field Notes Brand notebooks and listens to Pavement compulsively, or the girl who codes in TextMate and can’t stop listening to All-Time Quarterback. We want to be known to have those qualities, so in the one place on the internet where we can be in control of who people think we are, that’s what we write about ourselves. How often do you see someone include a flaw about themselves on their About page? Almost never? Comparatively, how often do you see someone write something positive about themselves on their About page? Exactly.
Defining a slightly-idealised version of ourselves for all of the internet to see gives us a little bit of hope that if we can write it, then maybe we can be it, too. I know that’s certainly the case for me.
On an emotional level, I also think that we like the idea that someone else wants to know who we are, and that writing an About page makes us think that someone really does want to know about us, but what is this, a LiveJournal or something? F that.
