Person and persona, and riding the line.: seanan

Person and persona, and riding the line.

In wandering aimlessly down the primrose paths of the internet, I recently encountered a comment from someone* who found my online persona "grating." Now, no one really likes to be called grating, unless they're in the middle of preparing cheese for the pizza, but they weren't calling me grating, they were calling my online persona grating. Except, of course, for the assumption built into that statement, that the online persona is inherently different from the person behind it.

I think everyone online has an aspect of "persona" to them, if only because ideally, on the internet, you have the opportunity to think before you press "submit." Not everyone does, but the option is still there, for all of us. We filter out certain aspects of ourselves: the faces we present to the world are not exactly one-to-one identical to the faces we present in private. I'm a little wittier on the internet, because I never have to deal with l'esprit d'escalier. On the internet, it doesn't matter that I can't pronounce l'esprit d'escalier (my French pronunciation is so bad it's comical).

I swear a little less on the internet, because I have to think about the process of typing out the word. "Shut your fucking face, you fucking fucker" rolls trippingly off the tongue, but it doesn't fall quite so easy from the fingers. I don't usually document how many times I need to pee. And yeah, since I come from the "do not air your dirty laundry in public" school of thought, I can come off as a bit of a perpetual Marilyn Munster when I really tend to flux between being a Marilyn and being a Wednesday. I let my cynicism off the leash sometimes, but I've found that it's more effective when I don't live and breathe in a haze of grumpy.

Also, I really am inappropriately enthusiastic about everything. Soda. Movies. Commercials that I really like. Street pennies. Peeing. I love peeing! I mean, I don't pee on trees or anything, but I really like it when I go into the bathroom feeling uncomfortable, and come out feeling a-okay. Plus it's an excuse to sit and read, and who doesn't love that? People who are around me in the real world are likely to get treated to a constant stream of alternatingly perky and snarlingly homicidal sound bytes. "Gosh, trees are nice, I like trees I WILL DESTROY ALL WHO THWART ME do you think maybe we should go back to Disneyland in October SOMEONE ON THE INTERNET IS WRONG RARRRRRHGHGHGHGH oh hey juice." Most of these things never make it online, because they're fleeting impulses, or because I don't feel like providing an ocean of context to make them make sense.

I guess that's really where internet persona comes in, at least for me: I make more sense online. I have less visible downtime, I'm a little less random, and I'm a little more measured with my swearing. I'm just as perky, and just as cranky, it's just not a twenty-four/seven thing. It's really important to me that I not be artificial online, because I spend so much time interacting with people offline, and I don't want to be reading from a script every time I do a public appearance. (Although that would be hysterical. I should write a "being Seanan at a book signing script," and start tapping people to stand in for me while I go to get myself another soda.) Filtered doesn't mean shallow, and thoughtful doesn't mean fake.

On the balance of things, I think you can tell whether or not you'd like me in person from listening to me online, as long as you remember that there's a whole third dimension offline, and that I can sometimes use that third dimension to run into traffic after red balloons, or produce seemingly random frogs. And I find that pretty cool.

Thoughts?

(*Who will not be named here, you know the drill, and everyone has the right to an opinion.)

ext_209138

June 21 2012, 11:39:47 UTC 5 years ago

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This isn't entirely related, but it reminded me of when I used to play FFXI. I can't speak for most people who play MMORPGs but the people I interacted with generally weren't really role-playing a character, though, I know there were specific groups that did do that). Mostly we were playing the game to play the game and so in regard to my character, it was basically me. Anyway, one thing and another happened and someone was really mean to my character in the game and for the life of me I can't really remember the situation. What I do remember is that I was sitting in front of my computer with tears pouring down my face because it was essentially no different than this person being mean to me even though it was this little collection of pixels.

I think the Internet is a lot like a costume for people. Not that they necessarily are disguising themselves or turning into superheroes, though, I suppose that's also likely. But more that there's an empowering feeling of anonymity. Perhaps more before social networking really took off, but still very much a fact. And I think because of that a lot sometimes tact and decency go out the window. Which is to say, while everyone has a valued opinion and has a right to share it, but I think the Internet as a whole isn't always the best venue for what everyone might have to say.

And FWIW, your enthusiastic randomness is one of the things I most enjoy about you! It's nice to know I'm not the only person in the world who is like that. ;-)

seanan_mcguire

June 22 2012, 16:54:55 UTC 5 years ago

This all makes very good sense.

dornbeast

June 22 2012, 18:16:04 UTC 5 years ago

"But more that there's an empowering feeling of anonymity. Perhaps more before social networking really took off, but still very much a fact. And I think because of that a lot sometimes tact and decency go out the window."

Very much so. One of the things I've noticed is that people can forget that there's a person typing this stuff. And once it's just words, not an actual person, there's less reason to be nice.

June 27 2012, 18:54:52 UTC 5 years ago

Mmhmm. You would think the opposite would be more true, though, given your ability to filter your reaction by nature of having to actually type it rather than just blurting out the first thing that popped into your mind. But logic and the Internet do not necessarily go hand in hand.

August 2 2012, 16:21:11 UTC 4 years ago

Thank you. :) I like you, too.

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Person and persona, and riding the line.

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