Manufacturing Online Identities

Thrift (2008) defines glamour as the industrial production of a sense of fascination with digital technologies. The fascination for digital technologies is tied to the discourse that digital technologies can revolutionise living conditions and alter the material realities of the users. Similarly, Gundle and Castelli (2006) define glamour as an outcome of modernist thought, arguing that the concept has antecedents in capitalist logic. I extend this conceptualisation and propose that glamour allows users to compensate for the “lack” in their lives resulting from the socio-economic and cultural constraints they face. The glamour of digital technologies grants the users liminal access to experiences they aspire to participate in, thus making them increasingly aware of the existing constraints and scarcity in their material worlds. I have categorised children's perception of the glamour of digital technologies under two themes. First, children believed they would experience upward social mobility through the online identities and networks they cultivated. In other words, children used digital technologies to get a glimpse into middle- and upper-class lives. Still, they could not translate these virtual experiences into material reality. Second, children used digital technologies to create glamorous online profiles and networks mimicking the realities of middle- and high-income people. Though children used digital technologies to give others an illusion of their glamour, the glamour was manufactured online and rarely helped them acquire upward class mobility.