ABSTRACT
Who are we online? The internet’s capacity for identity shifting is tremendous and forms a substantial part of what we might term the “internet imaginary”, or the set of beliefs that internet users subscribe to about the web. I defy you to go a day – a morning! – reading about the internet without coming across a reference to the New Yorker cartoon with the caption, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. This was published in 1993, aeons ago in internet years, and its central supposition – the ability to entirely pass as someone else – has been repeatedly debunked in sociological studies. This has not stopped it from seeming to hold true, then or now. Indeed, the way in which it has persisted as a myth is in itself signifi cant.
