How different in real life are you from your online 'persona'?

Something I read in another thread got me thinking.....

How are you different in day-to-day life than you are here? Are you different at all? Do you feel you come here to compensate the ass reaming life gives you on a day to day basis? Do you consider yourself an 'online persona'?

I'm not a fan of 'acts' or 'routines' by people online. It's seems like an incredible amount of energy and thought for no return at all.

But I do find it interesting when people do it and wonder what brought them to that point where 'being someone different' in a virtual world was their solution to being a nobody.

Discuss!

I'm pretty much what you see here.

Don't have time or the disposition for internet personas.

I generally don't curse as much and don't rant at all, mainly because in real life I generally don't give a shit about anything except my work.

I think I'm pretty much the same too.

Except here Tamar calls me a troll, but no one has ever called me a troll in real life.


Well except in real life I don't have long discussions about porn or the where abouts of the TOS Enterprise warp core or how many scarfs Tom Baker had or the merits of a VBulletin rep system or ... any scifi topic really.

Hmmm.... I might be completely different.

This.

I'm pretty much the same in meatspace as here. I do dial the sarcasm down some, tho.

Oh, and rep is a lot harder to do IRL than on a message board.

Mostly the same here as IRL.

I'm actually more profane and hateful offline than I am here.

Yeah. I'm pretty much the same.

yeah---what everyone else said.

I'll be very surprised if anyone admits to being a "persona" here.

I'm around a different group of people here than I am IRL. Also, the rules are different here than IRL. I would suppose that in reality our opinions shine forth for what they are. There is no "hot" factor here... No geniality of handshaking. Just ideas.

So while I interact differently in real life here, and perhaps snags IRL with mode tact, I think I and the rest of you are, at the core, the same here and IRL.

In that case I really need to meet Baba in real life.

Baba is definitely a persona. Gotta be. 'Cause if he's not, we've already crossed the event horizon and combustion is imminent.

I am no different online than I am in person.

However, I tend to use this place as well as other places I post, like facebook, to vent. I tend to be very calm in person and I'm great at holding my cool when necissary, but venting online has helped me in a way. Now that I do and I've seen peoples reactions, I'm a lot more likely to get it out in person.

So, there are tiny differences, but essentially it's still me.

Can you imagine Baba being at his work, in a meeting in some conference room, where a group is discussing some kind of production issue...

Bob: "We need to move through 150 more units this week."
Jerry: "Well we're having personal problems in Quality Control."
Baba: "Jerry do you think Edward James Olmos would make a good production manager?"

Excellent thread, Sokar!

My guess is that some of the more exaggerated personae are actually an expression of the inner thoughts of people who make nice IRL because they have to hold their rage in to keep from losing their jobs and/or having someone knock their teeth out. They realize they can’t do squat about the things that piss them off, so they vent at strangers on message boards.

As for me, I’ll say again that I’m only slightly less snarky IRL. The 20+ people here who’ve met me, with one outstanding exception, will verify that. Nevertheless, I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I couldn’t possibly be that way IRL...by a poster who has frequently said that “everyone plays a role online.”

At first I dismissed that as a case of confirmation bias. This poster was saying “I act differently online than I do IRL, therefore everyone else does, too.”

However, there is the matter of context. IRL, no one’s ever come up to me out of nowhere and said “You’re an old hag, your books suck [even though I’ve never read them], and you should die in a fire!” Again, maybe some people have thought some or all of that, but they know if they say it aloud, Security—if not a dozen fans in full Klingon regalia—will frog-march them to the exit.

Never, IRL, in any venue, not even in some neighborhood hangout in Bay Ridge with the “America Love It Or Leave It” banner that’s been hanging above the back bar since the Nixon administration, has anyone ever felt so threatened by my opinions that they’ve felt compelled to lash out like that.

(Well, not counting the old geezer in the oncoming lane when I was trying to execute a broken-Y turn in an 18-foot station wagon circa 1984 and not moving my vehicle fast enough for his taste who shouted out the window “You oughta be locked up!” But I figured he was just trying to impress his wife.)

So admittedly the preloaded anonymity-fueled rancor probably has a slight effect on my willingness to push back, but essentially WYSIWYG. And, again, anyone who’s met me can verify that. I’m a New Yorker born and bred, and that brings with it a certain unwillingness to let anyone steamroll me.

You set the tone. If you play nice, I'll play nice. If not...

What about you, Sokar?

My penis is much larger than I brag about on here.

I blog part-time as a lesbian, but other than that, nothing special.

I'm not clever enough to act differently online.
I bitch and rant just as much IRL.

I almost never talk about politics in real life.

I'm surrounded by liberals who can hardly think beyond "tax the rich" "evil corporations" "fatcat capitalists" so the few times I've spoken out I'm interrupted and labeled an evil privileged Republican.

So you feel just like you do at WF. We've been telling you for years now that you are an evil privileged Republican.

Well, at least here you can't actually interrupt me and I can get my whole thoughts out in a post. And they don't get deleted like on other boards/blogs.

My attitude and "persona" tends to reflect the situation that I am in, or where I'm at.

I hear that! I work with the Army and they are stacked very "minority" heavy so I keep my politics (conservative) to myself lest I'm accused of being a racist. Hey, you can't fight City Hall.....

Sure you can. That's why we have the 2nd Amendment.

My first reaction was "If this board were RL, I'd probably have a post count in the low triple figures."

But, OTOH, I've a lot of inane reactions to posts that I suppress in interests of not disrupting the conversation, whereas IRL I could just mumble them without really disrupting anything, so maybe it all evens out.

Very few people are actually the same IRL as on-line, and it's not because they intentionally put up a front or consciously mold their persona in a different way, it just sort of happens.

IRL, people get my sense of humor. So, I can discuss a serious topic and throw in a non-serious line every once in a while, and people get it.

I'm never asked to produce a link or evidence. We just discuss the merits of the statement - pro or con - and generally act like normal people.

Also, my bleeding heart liberal friends think I'm conservative.

I'm not quite as vocal about my opinions in real life as I am here. Especially since everyone around me is usually more conservative that I am.