ABSTRACT
The discursive perspective on identity I have adopted in this book might seem to imply that it does not matter whether or not the identity a narrator constructs through their online storytelling corresponds to the identity they project in offline contexts. If all identities are discursively constructed, they need not be stable or unified, but will always be in flux and susceptible to change. The small stories in Facebook updates are selective versions of the narrator’s experience and are often idealized rather than reporting a comprehensive story of all (perhaps less creditable) life events. Similarly, the celebrity stories told in Twitter are carefully crafted performances, rather than a genuine presentation of back stage identity. In this chapter, I examine storytelling situations that draw attention to the gap between the online and offline narratorial identities projected by a storyteller. These are stories where the narrator turns out to be someone other than who they first claimed. In fiction, such a situation is not usually a cause for concern. We do not expect a fictional narrator to mirror the story’s actual author.1 But in the case of first-person narratives of experience, a strong expectation remains that the person uttering the words of the story will turn out to be the same person who experienced the reported events and that the events will be reported as they were experienced. When these expectations are breached, the ethical implications of narratorial authenticity are brought into focus.
