# the art of being somebody online digital identity and project (robert) what > it's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside ir own head. always. all the time. that story makes you what you are. we build ourselves out of that story > ~ patrick rothfuss the name of the wind price for this concept considered as virtual art experience: insert here a project outline around being 'who you are who you say you are online' - on identity buddhist philosophy fickle internet fame and the robert what project the phrase 'to forge an identity' has obviously more than one meaning both of which (at least nominally) appear notions of philosophical interest. for a start who or rather what forges this identity - why - and out of what imprecise immaterials? "what" i am often seems a more interesting question that who - which can be simply answered 'anybody' or 'nobody'. whereas asking what feels a little more out of the ordinary something that requires an unusual approach as a vague conceptual (/artistic) response to complex modern notions of digital identity some random bloke from the uk - a self described amateur postmodern theorist - plans to undergo what ey terms radical plastic identity surgery to (/further) transform 'ir' (media) identity - the non-irony of course being that identity is already if not also necessarily plastic and malleable in order to reflect and pro-actively engage with modern fuzzy (/cultural) notions existential 'angstxieties' and contested debates concerning identity politics online privacy and the capitalistic need for digital identity 'verification' this dude plans to change ir name via deedpoll to the slightly deadpan "robert what" the word what in this (artificial) context could well refer to a standard phrase like "what's that about?" or "what's your name?" (ala abbot & costello) or as in the "you what you what you what?" football chant rob describes this odd move in vague terms as "positively estonian" and - simultaneously - as symbolic of the superficial emptiness of digital status symbolism non paradoxically ey first imagined performing this identity flip/switch "from nobody to an online.. whatever with an odd name" as a cynical marketing ploy to get more hits for a unknown video garme devblog. is this (minor-in-any-scheme) sea change still a core part of robert's digital strategy for virtual cybercult esport expansion? robert doesn't seem sure though ir's keen to find out it could go anywhere andor it could go nowhere. one initial impulse or seed idea about this project lay in checking out the sites of other ludonauts (video garme critics). the vast majority display ir 'real name' front and centre. for them the complex notion of digital identity seems a given something pre-baked in from the outset as if to say - even before saying something else of equal apparent obviousness - 'why of course this is who (/i say) i am!' it might be interesting to challenge that to examine such seemingly ordinary accepted notions for inherent flaws inconsistencies gaps and cool experimental potentialities. not only that namecheap is still asking me 'who i am' locking me(tm) out of my account until i prove it. it seems amusingly darkly-ironic - for a project addressing the often arbitrary nature of self the constant selfie taking me-me-me we're all so violently obsessed with. 'what' is all the damn fuss about? why does one human being among billions like (eg.) (name deleted) imagine they're quite so important? thing is way out here (where?) on teh liquid internets nobody knows you're a space monkey from a tiny rock flying around a ball of light in the middle of cosmic infinity. but for rob the amazing point is it that they don't seem to care - that these chimps have no real idea / only ideas about "what" they are - the incredible nature of that fact perhaps the value of "robert what" as an idea (as a formless ideation) is to bring an indistinctly literary awareness of the truer more hyperreal degree of curiosity of modern-postmodern digital identity and the tiny bizarre creatures which take 'it' - whatever it is or could be - for granted. (maybe they have no choice?) however one more definite irony about such a project seems that once rob changes into what it won't make any difference whatsoever. sempai still won't notice you. maybe the site with ir name will get a few more hits than usual. rob doubts they'll end up getting that seemingly all-important tick by ir name on twitter: "often as not that unfortunate parasitic tick by your name just means idiot confirmed" so what's the point of going through the bother of changing one's name getting a new passport driver's licence writing off to the bank and everyone else that needs to be informed of the apparently 'new you'? with a typical mix of thesaurus-eating flare and obscure new-age hype robert replies in the same way identity - self - is not sacrosanct or changeless but a buddhistic energy vortex of (/mass) psychological and cultural energy-flux project what has no central point but rather seems 'itself' just another pulsing node in a polymorphous post quantum matrix phasing in and out of temporal manifestation - dark virtual particles of meaning intent and symbolic import. the point is not to be somebody but to ask what if anything it means to be anybody at all. a monkey at a monitor idly checking out the blips and occasionally tapping the keyboard with the dirty end of an ant-covered stick one unique twist to project (robert) what is that ey appears to be going in the mirror direction to officially incorporated artist jennifer lyn morone(tm) in that ir's 'allowing' this project and 'ir' name to be an open source character usable in artistic projects by fellow 'researchers'. "rather than robert what being really 'my' name consider it just another name attached to some random online nobody." and so this semi-humble anybody travels on toward the ever retreating electronic horizon forging a path for itselves which soon fade - unsettled contingent footprints in the sand washed by an endless digital sea kinda // republic of bob