- It is part of the modern condition to pose and posture online, and it can be very fun to make fun of the various ways in which people make asses of themselves. But the unfiltered nature and open playing field of social media make it easy to forget that it's all a performance. In person, Michael was great! Really and truly. His terrible use of social media was part deliberate schtick and part stone-cold, childlike buffoonery, but it was all very lovable. (You know, like Entourage.) Demi adored Michael the person but eventually, she realized that keeping tabs on him made it harder for her to separate the real guy from the Scarlett Johansson Her guy.
Are you your online persona? Do you make an active effort to separate internet from physical space? Do you believe that people should veer one way or the other in presenting certain parts of their personality?
The issue of internet-mediated persona versus real-life person has been around since long before the advent of social media, and I think it's a lot more complex than simply that the former is fake and the latter genuine. The internet's a different place, sure. You're physically and temporally dislocated from the people you're interacting with, allowing great scope for manipulation of the image you put out. You can pose on Craigslist as a member of the opposite sex, or pretend to be a Nigerian prince, or just act like a belligerent arsehole with little fear of repercussion. And the way we communicate is definitely different - I don't usually talk like this in real-life. I swear a lot; I pause and say "um", I mispronounce words - communicating on the internet in false-time allows me to slow down and consider my words and sentence structure, and try to make sure I don't make any mistakes. But I don't swear in front of my grandmother. The idea that communication on the internet is somehow intrinsically fake (and the corollary that offline communication isn't) has never rung true for me. Online interaction is a particular kind of mediation - so is pretty much every space in life. The internet just offers a capacity for performance that is usually impossible in real life - a meek 15-year old nerd threatening to murder another player in a game of League of Legends, for example. Equally, though, this form of mediation allows for a great amount of openness and sincerity; people are often willing to share things with friends online that they would almost never say online. It just goes both ways. We are more or less constantly mediated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves. As I said above, I don't swear in front of my grandmother. That doesn't mean that the "real me" doesn't swear (and that doesn't mean that the non-swearing me is not the real me). I teach English as a second language in Dublin. Mostly I teach junior groups; Italians of 16-18 years. I was chatting to a couple of the other teachers about how we act in class - re-using the same jokes over and over and acting as if they're spontaneous. Sure, it's a bit facetious. But I just said goodbye to a lovely group of students today and the connection we had was not somehow unreal. When I'm at work I wear a shirt and slacks and black shoes. When I went to a staff party at a pub last summer, I wore jeans and a leather jacket and had my septum piercing out. Some of my colleagues were a little shocked at this difference, but it doesn't necessarily imply that my "work persona" isn't me. When I'm at home in Mayo I talk with a Mayo accent. This also happens when I'm drunk. I write letters to people quite a lot. I imagine I sound quite different in them. The manipulation of one's image that takes place in writing on the internet, whether intentional or otherwise, is not new. Is the real me the me talking to you late at night in a dark room talking about serious issues in my life? Sure. So is the me making bawdy jokes. So is the me sitting alone in my room typing into Hubski. We perform constantly, in many different contexts. That doesn't necessarily mean that none of that counts as "real". Mediation is more-or-less ever-present, whether online or offline. I don't mean to go all hippy on you and suggest that people are super-complex chimaeras or shape-shifters; there's plenty of consistency. There's also plenty of seeming inconsistency, but lack of consistency doesn't imply that certain parts are fake and certain parts are real. People certainly act "fake" on the internet at times, but we've been doing that in real life for thousands of years. But I suppose all of the above is a fairly pointless aside because the ultimate point of the article is basically true - online and offline personas, even if they're equally "mediated", are often quite different, as anyone who's met someone online and then in person can tell you. And also I seen to have veered way off the topic of the differences between how people present themselves on social media and how they act offline. Sorry if I'm not particularly lucid; my brain has pretty much turned to mush in the past two years. (Yeah I'm totally different in person BTW.)
So, your argument is that internet personas are just another form of code-switching?
The issue of internet-mediated persona versus real-life person has been around since long before the advent of social media, and I think it's a lot more complex than simply that the former is fake and the latter genuine.
Nah. I did very briefly a couple of years ago, when some of my friends were into it and would play it at my house (my housemate was one of them). Briefly messed around playing Riven, but I was rubbish. I didn't play long enough to receive threats of murder, but I did several times bump into players who told me to uninstall the game or learn the fuck to play. This was while playing against bots. Beginner bots. Y'know, the bots you play against to learn how to play the game... Still, it's a pretty fun game with a bunch of people around a table and some beers.
I'm pretty much the same person online and off. I'm just more vocal on the internet. And the reason for that is because there's no repercussions to saying stuff, so I can be a lot less careful with speaking my mind. My 'filter' pretty much disappears when online. But you can guarantee that everything I say online I still think IRL. And vice versa. So in that sense, I'd say I am my online 'persona', and the 'real life me' is simply an act/charade to ensure social bonds stay safe. I always get nervous/hesitant when there's a risk between associating my online self and my physical self. Mainly because my physical self is much more secretive and quiet with my thoughts. And having online self's words come into play would cause all sorts of problems. If anything, my online self is more 'true', and I attempt to display myself accurately. While my physical self simply appears how people see. Which, in most cases, is much more accepted within the community at large.
Have you ever asked your self why that is (in either direction)?
Conflict breeds anger. In person this isn't so great. Online, it doesn't matter. Online is much more open, and if someone doesn't want to continue, they can just leave (and someone else can join in). In person, you can hardly get 2 words out without interrupting the other person's fueled anger.
I think some withdrawal is good. A couple of times I've been in a community with sheer fucking assholes, and have simply walked away. Realised that I was just making myself miserable even interacting with them. The relief you get it immense because there are so many nicer, better places to go. The sad thing (as happened with my communities I exited) was that often they start good, then get taken over by assholes. We joke about "Eternal September" but it's a real problem. There is a natural "best size" to a community that satisfies its original members. But total withdrawal? The thing is that the internet has become a utility and social media is becoming (kind of) like a postal address. People need to reach you. If you have no presence, then you are kind of "homeless".
I found the only solution is not to play. So I deleted my Facebook, don't use my twitter, don't have Instagram, barely post on reddit and tumblr, etc. This is the only place online where I put myself out to other people even a little bit, and I feel comfortable enough to let the true me out. I dare say this says a lot about Hubski!
As a second thought: This hit me really really hard > The gap between public and private personae used to be the exclusive concern of entertainers, but now anybody who wants to can live Martin. I have a few friends who maintain twitter, facebook, youtube, instagram profiles that exactly resemble the profiles of, I don't know how you'd call them, I guess 'amateur social media celebrities'. In a sense, this isn't even surprising; the professional social media celebrities are the cream of this crop. These are normal, everyday people who are really cool in real life, but the second they get behind a screen, they turn into celebrities. It's really disconcerting. It makes it hard to interact with them online as human beings, because even though you know them, and they know you, anything you say to them publicly will get responded to by their persona, not by them. And worse, it's a stark reminder of how the sausage is made, so to speak. You see a person who is totally them in person, but online they become this quazi-celebrity with a manicured image, and all that entails. And then you realize that this isn't them just expressing their raw self. They're doing this intentionally, because it makes more people interested in them. And in most cases, this isn't monetized, it's a pure ego trip. So now you're stuck pondering their motives; who's so vain that they'll do all this for meaningless internet points? And when you realize just how scripted and filtered everything is, you start having odd moments where you realize: "They misrepresented this specific detail, intentionally, because they know it would make them more popular to do so. I wonder what other details I don't know they're shrouding". You start to question the reality of any of your interactions. Taken to its logical extreme, it's as if these people are social media marketing executives, except instead of shilling for a company, they're selling themselves. You realize that every since time you've thought that something marketers do is immoral, your friend did the same thing. It's a really hard thing to deal with
Reading things like this can be kind of unsettling, because I emphatically am my "internet persona". Both in the sense that, for one, I act pretty much the same way in real life. For two, I do a majority of socializing online and so, were there a disconnect between my social media and meatspace personas, the former would be more 'real'. But anyways, I very deliberately don't front on social media. I have trouble understanding when other people are, and so I don't. It feels very superficial and unreal, so I don't. The world has enough farce; I want something real. I've recently experimented with fake internet personas, and it was kind of liberating, but mostly it felt alienating. On the one hand, it gave me newfound freedom to express unpopular ideas, take risks, and not have to constantly worry about offending people. On the other hand, it was almost worse; what if it turns out my fake persona is more popular than me, and then I'm forever stuck between "I can have fake friendships" vs "I can have none". The existential angst of my life. "Facebook Envy", FOMO, whatever you want to call it, it's real. It hits me hard. And so I do my part, in my own way, to stop it. Sometimes it gets demoralizing