When Selfies Turn into Online $Doppelg\ddot{a}ngers$: From Double as Shadow to Double as Alter Ego

Abstract

Meeting the Doppelg$\ddot{\text {a}}$nger (double) is described in literature as a premonition of one’s imminent demise it is the kiss of death. The ominous figure of the Doppelg$\ddot{\text {a}}$nger is captured as literary motif in amongst others Jean Paul’s $Siebenk\ddot{\text {a}}s$ (1796); Feodor Dostoevsky’s The Double (1846), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). The shadowy double has also appeared in numerous films from Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956) to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966); Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996) and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), and recently The Double (dir. Richard Ayoade, 2013) to name only a few. On social networks the selfie (self-induced double)—mediated by the accessibility of mobile and handheld technologies—proliferates as virtual stand-in or Doppelg$\ddot{\text {a}}$nger for the self. Selfies are online persona that can constantly and instantly be updated and uploaded to be viewed and evaluated by others. They create a telepresence to facilitate continuous accessibility and a sense of omnipotence. As selfies become ubiquitous other impostors such as the DATA Doppelg$\ddot{\text {a}}$nger (the digital data trail one leaves consciously or unconsciously), threaten online selves like a repressed shadow. But perhaps the specter of the Doppelg$\ddot{\text {a}}$nger is most forebodingly figured by programmed digital personae such as MyCyberTwin and Project Lifelike that simulates presence by interacting and responding to others as the person would. Thus the online persona not only looks like the person but also now acts as the person. In this sense the online persona no longer represents but rather presents the self.

The mask swallowed up the face

(Gombrich, 1972, 13)