Who is me and who is I?

Yeah, the title is fairly confusing I admit, but the whole idea of who we are as a person can be considered just as confusing. It begs us to reevaluate ourselves and wonder if we are who we think we really are. This is especially true with people who are considered social media influencers who are extremely public about their personal lives as that is essentially their job. In this case, we can see a difference between “I” and “me” as talked about by George Herbert Mead.

As this is my first blog post on here, I guess I should introduce myself as well! My name is Jordan Mendoza, and I am writing this due to the fact that I have been assigned it, but I also am curious to see how far the idea of "I" and "me" goes as well. Today I will be talking about Jacksepticeye to explain the idea of Mead’s theory of “I” and “me”. The “me” part of this theory is essentially how people see you or at least believe you are supposed to be in certain situations. The “me” is more socially involved as the environment and external factors that surround you also become internalized, which means that we might act a certain way or people believe this is how we should act because that is what they have observed based on the interactions and encounters they have had with us. The “I” boasts the opposite as this is the part where our individualistic side factors as this are what we as individuals are truly like internally. That does not mean that these do not connect as the “I” is a direct response to the “me” characteristic as the response is constructed based off of what people assume about us. To simplify that, as Dr. Vrooman puts it, basically “I” makes you the subject or the hero of the story and the “me” makes you the object or puts you in the shoes of how another person might perceive you. Now I know you are wondering, what does this have to do with Jacksepticeye? Well, let us dive into that, shall we?

Jacksepticeye's channel

Jacksepticeye is a well-known YouTuber who specializes in gaming videos and commentary. He is known for his eccentric personality and Irish accent, which seems to make him notable amongst the crowd. As seen through the photo above, he does not necessarily take his videos seriously and likes to have fun with his content as content creators should. However, this also paints a very “me” picture for Jacksepticeye on YouTube as people want him to fit these criteria of a loud Irish dude on the screen as that is what people have come to expect of him. One of his biggest distinguishable features to people is his hair which had been dyed green for the longest time and it matched his channel theme really well. When people saw that he went back to his normal hair, people freaked out and almost panicked seeing him different from the usual person they have come to know and love.

A comment talking about Jacksepticeye's hair change

He was the same person after all, he just did something that was different than what the “me” would characterize him according to his YouTube personality. This, in my opinion, broke this invisible “me” barrier and shattered peoples sense of reality, which is why they were freaking out as they saw Jacksepticeye almost like another being that was not human and that catered to their needs specifically for a refined sense of entertainment that was unique to him and his established persona.

So, we see that Jacksepticeye acts like this loud, goofy character for the camera because that is the “me” we recognize him as for his YouTube persona. He does talk about topics that are important to him and more serious topics like racism and Youtube's bad systems from time to time on the channel, but generally to keep his persona on YouTube, he maintains the goofiness generally in most videos. We do see instances of “I” from Jacksepticeye, or I should better say Seán William McLoughlin as that is his real name, more on Instagram. This seems to be a weird phenomenon where we see Seán’s personality divided into two different types of sections and that is split according to the social media platform he is posting on. On Instagram, we see a more relaxed Seán where he posts pictures outside of his section where he normally films for YouTube. He still has this sort of care-free attitude feel about him, but compared to his YouTube channel, he is much calmer and posts pictures that are similar to what many of our other friends and family members would post on Instagram. So, we get to see this other side of Seán that becomes what I believe, the “I” version of him that we see off-camera or at least, off from the YouTube side of things. Although he might only show us a portion of his life as does everyone on social media, this portion of his life may come off more authentic where he is showing us life past his YouTube persona. It is quite interesting to see how this dynamic feeds off each other even though they portray Jacksepticeye in two different lights.

Jacksepticeye's (Seán’s) Instagram photos

One important thing to note also is that the difference of the “I” vs “me” with Jacksepticeye is that this does not mean it makes him seem fake either way, but that these pieces make up Seán as a whole. Mead helps us to understand these pieces to better understand people and how their personalities of "me" and "I" create the individuals we come to know. In this way, we can see that we all have some form of “I” and “me” and that this not make us seem disingenuous, but it instead simply makes up the culmination of who we are as a person. Through the lens of a social media perspective, Seán perfectly sums up the nature of Mead’s theory to both show what people think we should be displayed as and what we want to be displayed as according to the platform we are on and the audience.