Tales from the field: Giving voice to my digital self

This tale from the field began as a commission for a menswear magazine. Unpublished due to complications that arose during Covid, this account of getting dressed and walking to work sat untouched on a shelf for a number of years until it was disturbed once again by its author. Re-reading the work they were shocked to find that it was not in their ‘voice’. Reproduced here in full, the original article was instead written in the voice of their online self, a digital character that had been created as part of a piece of digital ethnographic fieldwork spanning two years. By returning to this creative piece of ethnography the author reexamines the purpose of creative praxis and the insight that can be gained from giving voice to one’s digital self.