The person who I portray myself to be online is not who I really am. That guy is the one who people see the worst of, when he has no idea where he is, throwing up in a club somewhere then waking up the next morning to find cuts all over himself and wondering whether this will make a good story to tell to people. Well it does, so I do tell it, because it allows me to paint myself using the colours that I want. The internet allows this thanks to it’s slower pace, relative to real-life, you can think about what you say before you say it, doctor an image before you show it to someone, lay out your personality in such a way as to make it pleasing to the people you want to please.
The wide variety of social networking sites, forums and blog websites facilitate the engineering of a personality which is not my own, but the personality which will most appeal to who I want to be in contact with. Facebook is a place where I can show everyone just how zany my exploits can be, and this blog is a place where I can prove how articulate I can be. Forums, which I still occasionally visit – such as EuroFusion, run by my friend from Xbox Live – allow me to basically piss on a few tree stumps and gather allies about myself. I read reddit so that I have stuff to post on here in the hope that someone worthwhile will read it and get in touch with me.
With regard to the construction of an identity, I do it because it is a kind of false comfort. The knowledge that even if I get tired of my life in reality, I still have a multitude of users online that still see me in the way that I want them to see me. I have this back-up identity, a safety net which I can use to legitimate myself.
Now, I’m not saying that I do all this entirely consciously, that would be a rather chilling prospect, rather I am laying bare the drives behind all that I do online, and perhaps in reality as well.
