Personas
attachments are formed, here on the net. notice how i say
"on the net"... as if it were a physical plane. which it ain't. but sometimes
it feels as if it were. it feels like that to me sometimes. and then it is
with some effort that i remind myself, but it ain't *real* elizabeth, and
that too, perhaps, elizabeth ain't real. only the idea, the fiction of elizabeth
is real. as are you, only the fiction of you is real.
follow up question: what difference might there be between terran
and virtual identities?
must must must you try to stick me into something comforting,
something concrete, an attractively embroidered flesh-suit? ronny and betty
civilized? and whose concept of civiliztion will that ah... embody? Because
you discount one thing... if not for this virtuality, chances are none of
us would be speaking thus. con-textually, pre-editedly... performing
ourselves.
Remember, the other side of the anonymity coin is
RESPONSIBILITY.
Only the mask can reveal the invisible face.
Ely's Law: Wear the right costume and the part plays
itself.
For me, a pleasure of the Internet is to have some choice and
some control over who I think you see/read. Why on earth should I reveal
education, avocation, create an envelope into which to stuff myself? I do
that f2f all the time! I very much enjoy watching
how I am electronically understood. I like to use a quotation in a
.sig to reveal.
"here", whoever you happen to be, remains to be proven by the
content and context of your posts,
I have little interest in creating (by ommission or otherwise)
a new persona for cyberspace. I hardly have a grip on my real one. In addition,
when I discuss almost any subject I use events from my life to illustrate
or dramatize the points I want to make. Thus, my real life envelope comes
out rather quickly anyway. After a while in this medium subterfuge seems
to lose its entertainment value.
Anonymity, never leave home without it.
I'm certain that someone who knows me socially (f2f) would recognize
me in a line-up here.
What's "fictive?" Yes, I agree that we are creatively bringing
ourselves into a kind of fictional being here,
but don't we do that practically everywhere? I'm very verbal
in RL -- I'm very verbally dramatic in RL -- I gesticulate alot in RL --
All of which sends a story to my "audience" in RL. That sounds, to me, as
"fictive" as what I do here.
On the Net, anonymity is at best an illusion, and is impossible
to preserve unless you are posting through an anonymous server like funet.fi.
Using the tools available to me (on and off the Net), I can (if I wish) find
out a great deal about people. The Internet is really a fairly public place,
even on the lists.
I'm struck, too, with the ambivalence between
safe experimentation on the one hand, and risky
genuineness on the other. To venture into
cyberspace as a neuter, unemcumbered, free-floating entity must be quite
a welcome change for many. And an empty, impersonal experience at times,
too.
Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to Robosquirrel who
got word to Lady_Lydia/Lyds. Both of them are wizards on Doughnut Land.
mostly i think because of the slant of this list. i prefer to
keep my rl self a bit opaque as a means for experimentation.
It's _very_ easy in email to pass off cheap, one-inch-deep personas
as "real". Indeed, the more coarse the caricature, the easier it is. Likewise,
the more enigmatic (like this Frank Rapport guy, or youearly on), the easier
it is. Less of a story to keep straight.
It seems though that freedom in fact is not what it looks like
from afar and a satisfying self is not an easy thing to invent. What begins
as an adventure, an experiment, a psychic makover, can end up a prison.
Cleverness plays itself out, the witty reparte ends, and there is nothing
to fall back upon, because the persona has no underlying depth of experience
to draw upon. Ya gotta move on.
>The term is pseudo-anonymity, identity but no reality.
Authenticity without reference point
a lot of the affect here is
projection. love affairs
and flame wars happen way out of porportion
to f2f interactions. people literaly read more into
a note than is there.
Multifaceted personality disorder? (grin) By engaging in the
adoption of personnas here in this unfettered environment, are we better
able to understand and accept the various facets of our personalities in
our "offline existence?" Am I close?
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