For this week’s activity, I created a fictional character called Dylan Sutter. I thought creating an opposite gender, Caucasian person would be interesting, as that is very different to my identity as an Asian woman. Dylan Sutter is a photographer and explorer. He likes to go on adventures, and is sometimes paid to capture scenes beautifully for companies. His aspiration is to make a bigger name for himself, and to have a huge following on social media sites. He would like to venture out of his comfort zone, and take more staged photographs that are metaphorical and empowering, which incite viewers to think and reflect on their own life. To make this his dream, he is networking on Twitter, and posting his photos on Instagram.
Although I’m a Business major, I personally have always had a huge passion for photography, so I temporarily got to channel that to its extreme through a fictional character. I posted up original photos that I had taken for Dylan’s social media accounts. I partnered up with classmates Aron Check, Edwyn Reyes, and Cameren Johnson. Aron created a character called Timothy Q, who is arrogant and unpleasant towards others. Edwyn created a character called Sambath Q who is Timothy Q’s brother. Cameren is a girl named Rachel who loves to surf.
I had a conversation with Timothy Q first on twitter, complimenting his photos and telling him to check out mine. Timothy responded a bit rudely, so Sambath apologized for his brother’s behavior. Rachel also responded to the photos circling around and mentioned that she loved to surf there. They all ended up following each other on Instagram, after finding out they had mutual friends.
It was fun creating this story and interacting in this world. I actually got a few likes on my picture through hashtags, which I thought was pretty cool. I considered for a moment that maybe it was possible to live out this fake alias’ dream!
Stephanie M. Chang 