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Do you believe in an 'internet self'?

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whytemyke

Honorary Canadian.
I frequent this other board on the net, and there's this one guy who takes it WAYYY too seriously. He'll find hot chicks on this board, start messaging them on instant messengers, develop a whole intricate relationship with them (as I'm sure some people knwo can happen on the net), then take personal convos revealing deep personal facts about the girls and put them everywhere on the net, just to get back at girls for being attractive. I mean, I don't care who you are, this is NOT HEALTHY.

But I just argued with someone about it who also frequents that board, and they said that the person only does it online. I replied that I'd never hire someone like that, out of fear that they'd bring a gun to work one day, as they are THAT unstable. If they are sooo bothered by their real life that they have to go online to take out aggression to that degree, they've gotta be off their rocker and ready to snap.

Does anyone here agree that the personality one portrays online is most often, if different from ones own normal personality, still an integral part to ones 'real' personality? If someone goes online and tries to seriously hurt people, for no real reason, does it leave to reason that they're probably not very stable in their regular lives, so much so that their 'e-selves' could one day branch into their real selves and actually hurt real people? I mean, some times I see people online that just use the internet like a serial-rapist training camp.

or, relating to this board, is the shit like what olimario pulls, 'pretending' to be racist online, merely a reflection of his introverted 'real' self? or is it just what he says... an illusion?
 
Olimario is just trash, online or off.

I don't buy into the whole "intraweb persona" bullshit in general, to answer your question tho. However, there are certainly aspects of my life that I just don't discuss with faceless strangers for a variety of reasons(lack of relevance, don't want to toot my own horn, etc etc).
 
Oh yeah, exactly, but you would still greet someone from the web in essentially the same manner as you would greet someone in real life? And treat them generally the same as you'd treat an acquaintence?
 
Yeah, I'm a firm believer in the WYSIWIG principle. Fuck, I greet my good friends with an extended middle finger and a "What's up, motherfucker?" as a manner of greeting. I know it's hard for some people on here to fathom that I am the way I say I am, but I yam what I yam(god that was terrible). If I call you stupid or ignorant on the internet, I would do the same thing to your face.
 
I'm not sure. In certain ways, I do believe that we can tend to craft personas online that can be quite different from how we "really" are.

As a small example, I have become fairly loose with "shit"s and "fuck"s on the board, but I never swear IRL.
 
whytemyke said:
Oh yeah, exactly, but you would still greet someone from the web in essentially the same manner as you would greet someone in real life? And treat them generally the same as you'd treat an acquaintence?
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Hell no. The thousands of miles between me and everyone I talk to makes me a BIG MAN, WHO CAN PUSH PEOPLE AROUND WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
 
Yes, I do.
What a random person who encounters me in real life thinks of me is VERY DIFFERENT from what a random poster online who encounters me thinks of me. Will the people here who hate me buy into that? Of course not. It doesn't stop it from being the truth.
 
Yes and no. Online I have the same opinions when it comes to politics, sports, and that type of thing, but I am much more likely to "speak" my mind on the internet than in real life. I'm a pretty conservative guy when it comes to politics, and I have discussed politics pretty openly on internet newsgroups and forums, but when it comes to my political economic courses in college, I generally sit back and let the professors do there thing, whether I agree with them or not. In my head, I think of ways I could argue my side, or support theirs, but I am very unlikely to ever raise a hand or speak up in public. On the internet, it just seems easier, partially because you have time to pick your words, and there isn't anyone that you're directly talking to.
 
I'm pretty much the same.

olimario said:
Yes, I do.
What a random person who encounters me in real life thinks of me is VERY DIFFERENT from what a random poster online who encounters me thinks of me. Will the people here who hate me buy into that? Of course not. It doesn't stop it from being the truth.
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I believe it. Though I was really hoping you'd turn out to be the captain of a marauding band of asspirates, another dream crushed. =(
 
Forgotten_Taco said:
I'm pretty much the same.



I believe it. Though I was really hoping you'd turn out to be the captain of a marauding band of asspirates, another dream crushed. =(
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YA-HARRRR
Keep dreaming, matey.

WM-1093t.jpg
 
pj325is said:
Hell no. The thousands of miles between me and everyone I talk to makes me a BIG MAN, WHO CAN PUSH PEOPLE AROUND WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE
Click to expand...

Exactly.

The InterWeb gives jerks, dullards, and wannabe bullies the anonymity they crave and a forum for their boorish behavior. It's easy to gain attention on the InterWeb by acting negatively and there's little to no chance anyone will be brought to task for anything he does.

It's sort of sad, really. We're growing a generation of vidiots who think it's acceptable to log on, become faceless, and treat others with complete hostility and total disregard. We're giving the socially retarded an avenue by which they can completely bypass normal social interaction. And let's not forget that we're breeding a class of people perfectly comfortable with the word asshat as social commentary.
 
I am definitely a different person offline, but not by much. I generally just conduct myself differently. I suppose it's the intangible relationships here... I'm far less considerate. I have too little respect for people and so I treat them how I would any shithead. It's never fair, but oh well. I just try and enjoy myself. If you get caught in the crosshairs, I'll just make my general, all-reaching apology now. ;)

olimario said:
Yes, I do.
What a random person who encounters me in real life thinks of me is VERY DIFFERENT from what a random poster online who encounters me thinks of me. Will the people here who hate me buy into that? Of course not. It doesn't stop it from being the truth.
Click to expand...
Does that make it better? How we project ourselves to other people IRL and what goes on in our heads is generally pretty different; sometimes entirely. Any "internet persona" may be seperate (sic? i hate that word) from how you're perceived IRL, but that doesn't mean it's any further from your true self.
 
I believe it exists, but I'm pretty much the same loud-mouthed sports fan who makes stupid jokes all the time in real life :)
 
olimario said:
Yes, I do.
What a random person who encounters me in real life thinks of me is VERY DIFFERENT from what a random poster online who encounters me thinks of me. Will the people here who hate me buy into that? Of course not. It doesn't stop it from being the truth.
Click to expand...
Of course a RANDOM person who bumps into you in real life isn't going to know that you sold naked pics of your gf for a piece of videogame hardware. Or that you once recommended killing fat people. Or that you posted pictures of your penis on an internet forum. Or that you flooded your house by running your bathtub overlong and then blamed it on your maid. Or that you want to fuck your gamecube. Or that you have suppressed racist feelings. Or that you habitually spy on people and take candid pictures of them and then post them on the internet(God knows what you haven't posted).

Yeah. If I didn't know that, I'm sure I would think you were a stand-up guy, Gary.
 
How someone acts online and how they act offline can vary a lot. Some may take the anonymity and do something with it. Maybe they're more outgoing; maybe they're more willing to hold a conversation; maybe it becomes easier to talk about issues. Others probably don't see a difference at all, their "online self" is a perfect reflection of who they are away from an Internet connection.

But the example you posted:

But I just argued with someone about it who also frequents that board, and they said that the person only does it online. I replied that I'd never hire someone like that, out of fear that they'd bring a gun to work one day, as they are THAT unstable. If they are sooo bothered by their real life that they have to go online to take out aggression to that degree, they've gotta be off their rocker and ready to snap.
Click to expand...

Psycho is still psycho. If he wasn't doing this online, he'd find another way to harass these women.
 
olimario said:
Yes, I do.
What a random person who encounters me in real life thinks of me is VERY DIFFERENT from what a random poster online who encounters me thinks of me. Will the people here who hate me buy into that? Of course not. It doesn't stop it from being the truth.
Click to expand...

Are these people real or stuffed? Because I can't imagine being very accepting of a creepy little boy who spies on and takes pictures of his neighbors and who also takes naked pictures of his girlfriend to sell to someone on the InterWeb. For electronics.
 
I guess my overall question, though, is do peoples internet personas reflect their real personality, even a normally-subdued part of it, or can they be completely mutually exclusive?

I mean, there's no way that, the guy from my example, can have such a hatred of people online and then have no resulting effects of it in his own life... is there?
 
Raoul Duke said:
I don't buy into the whole "intraweb persona" bullshit in general, to answer your question tho. However, there are certainly aspects of my life that I just don't discuss with faceless strangers for a variety of reasons(lack of relevance, don't want to toot my own horn, etc etc).
Click to expand...



Ditto. The guy you see online is pretty much the guy you get in real life. I'm a bit wary of people that have "internet" lives.
 
whytemyke said:
I guess my overall question, though, is do peoples internet personas reflect their real personality, even a normally-subdued part of it, or can they be completely mutually exclusive?
Click to expand...

It depends entirely on how high a level of escapism the medium affords them. I can only imagine that MMORPGs allow someone - who wants it badly enough - to craft an online identity with little to no bearing on who they actually are.

In short, and to quote Futurama: "It varies from person to person." ;)
 
whytemyke said:
I mean, there's no way that, the guy from my example, can have such a hatred of people online and then have no resulting effects of it in his own life... is there?
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Well, maybe. We all work differently. But he's still a sick fuck, all the same. What goes on his mind has to be pretty disturbing. Maybe down the road what he does on the internet will be reflected in real life if he begins to get bored.
 
Socreges said:
Well, maybe. We all work differently. But he's still a sick fuck, all the same. What goes on his mind has to be pretty disturbing. Maybe down the road what he does on the internet will be reflected in real life if he begins to get bored.
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I wouldn't go near that fucker in real life. I mean, talk about a guy who's a pussyhair away from going postal...

Personally, Im as charming in real life as I am on here. I speak the same way (even around my mom, unfortunately... and worse yet is that she doesn't even mind anymore when I say 'fuck'... what happened to the 1950's?!) in real life as I do on here, and i'm as nicely-mean in real life as I am online. Hm.
 
Disco Stu said:
Exactly.

The InterWeb gives jerks, dullards, and wannabe bullies the anonymity they crave and a forum for their boorish behavior. It's easy to gain attention on the InterWeb by acting negatively and there's little to no chance anyone will be brought to task for anything he does.

It's sort of sad, really. We're growing a generation of vidiots who think it's acceptable to log on, become faceless, and treat others with complete hostility and total disregard. We're giving the socially retarded an avenue by which they can completely bypass normal social interaction. And let's not forget that we're breeding a class of people perfectly comfortable with the word asshat as social commentary.
Click to expand...

I agree. What's disconcerting is that GAF is supposed to be more adult and we're not all 13 year olds here and the behavior is still crap. Just look at the various political, controversial threads and see how people behave. And considering many posters here are adults and have jobs... and I don't want to knock on the moderators again as its not as bad as it used to be, but the mods/admins on GAF are sometimes the biggest jerks on the boards, giving other posters who share their opinion a blank check to actlike total retards and get away with it because a mod wouldn't ban people they agree with and it'd reflect badly on their own behavior.

Of course, there will be pockets of decent conversation and there are a few good threads here and there, but I really dislike the internal politics of forum trolling, which usually goes something like this.

-Someone starts a topic.
-An early consensus emerges from the next 10 or so posts about the subject.
-Bitter that an idea they support is getting trashed, the trolls enter the thread and try to change the consensus and derail it by planting flame baits.
-These flamebaits of course are usually meant to give the troll a feeling of control over reclaiming the argument. Such as a generalized, firm disagreement followed by a controversial statement ie: No, you're all wrong. <<insert controversial statement here>>

-Flame war ensuses. Thread descends into pointles 1-1 flamefests between posts, and you could have several of these going at once.
-By page 10, no one remembers that there was actually a consensus and people entering the discussion by this point has lost the big picture.
-Discussion has now moved into factual tit-for-tat about who got what facts right and arguing over scraps of terrority
-troll wins.

Edit: As for internet persona, I pretty much agree that I'm more vocal on-line, but then again, in the offline world, there is no such forum of communication that is even close to the scope of GAF OT/Games. On-line messageboards are truly unique places for people to show their worst sides, but also to exchange ideas and spread viruses, porn and funny links that has never existed before.

It's always a shock for many people to see the people they imagined on-line were totally different offline.
 
I think I do tend to be different online, at least on forums such as this one. Mostly, I'd put it down to the fact that I have more time to plan out what I want to say on forums, whereas, even in a conversation on an instant messaging program, I wouldn't have the same liberties with regards to time, and as far as what I can say without being bothered about it. Because of that, I say things I think here that I might think, but wouldn't usually have time to put into words. If that made any sense.

Otherwise, my "online persona" is basically the same as it is in real-life, for better or worse. =/ And yeah, I'm always skeptical of people who have "online personas". It seems like a pretty pathetic thing to do, generally.
 
Yes. I am an internet self.

Do not bring up my internet self with my real self, or I get very agitated.
 
We all have to admit it's rather easy to be free and your true self online without emotions to read off or fear of someone not liking you. I am 90% the same i am here, as i am in real life ( minus the signing of my posts, becuase signing off my conversations would be creepy ) :D

DCX
 
DCX said:
We all have to admit it's rather easy to be free and your true self online without emotions to read off or fear of someone not liking you. I am 90% the same i am here, as i am in real life ( minus the signing of my posts, becuase signing off my conversations would be creepy ) :D

DCX
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:lol

I just had a thought of you at McDonald's or something singning off your conversations.
Cashier: Welcome to McDonalds may I help you.

DCX: Yes, I'll have a Big Mac, Fries, and a Strawberry shake, DCX.

Cashier: What?

DCX: That's all DCX.

Cashier: Uhhh...ok, that will be $5.12.

DCX: Here's a $10, DCX.

Cashier: Why do you keep saying DCX?

DCX: Because how would you know that I'm finished talking if I didn't, DCX?
Click to expand...
 
The only extent to having an "Internet self" is that I go by a different name (SickBoy is my first name, but in real life, I go by my second name), and that I talk openly about different things -- there's very little I have to say to others about video games, for example, except friends who play and my brother... and even then, it's all pretty basic stuff.

Online, I try to be as decent towards people as I would in real life. It's possible I'm a little less so, but if that's the case it's only 'cause a lot of online people aren't very civil.

I think in most cases the reason for that isn't so much "I'm acting different because I'm an online character!" but that people who are aggressive, nasty or generally asses online have some latent desire to act that way in real life. There are surely other reasons for that sort of behavior, but I think that's number one.
 
My internet persona Alyssa DeJour is pretty much the same as me in real life. I actually have quite a few "internet" friends that I am pretty close to as well, and I would have to admit that I am very open with them too. If one of them posted our conversations about the place I would be shattered, not so much because of the content, but because they did that to me. What an asshole.
But do I believe that the personality one portrays online is most often, if different from ones own normal personality, still an integral part to ones 'real' personality? Yes I do. People may only show a certain side of themselves on-line, but it is still a part of themselves. I would have to say that there is one particular friend I have on line who would actually know me better than most of my real life friends, and vice-versa. There is something comforting about opening up to someone who has no bareing on your real life.
But you still get your assholes, whether on-line or in real life.
 
My current internet self is in denial of my many other internet selves. If people couldn't adapt to their surroundings, changing who they are momentarily, Uwe Boll wouldn't have any supporters whatsoever. And a world without Uwe supporters is a world I don't wanna live in.

A bit more seriously, I don't really treat these boards, and the internet in general, as reality. The people I read and converse with online exist for entertainment purposes, but don't enter my normal life whatsoever. As far as I'm concerned, this world and 'the real one' are completely seperate. So ladies, if you ever need someone who'll check out your nude pics before you post them on a cam whore page, without stalking you in real life, I'm your man.
 
My forum/online gaming self is argumentitave, a shit stirrer and a bit of a cunt.
My real life self is apathetic to the point where I'm not motivated to do anything, and is a bit of a cunt.
 
im more calm online than offline.
Im usually a psycho in real life.

A lot of it has to do with the fact I really don't like talking shit online if I can't back my shit up. I feel having an ego serves no purpose if you can't see that person in real life.

Funny thing is though I talk to my gf about GAF all the time and how I want to look "cool" for you guys. Its so sad, but I'm more concerned than what GAF thinks of me rather than what people think of me in real life :lol. Might be why I have such reservations with my online persona.
 
I believe that who we are online is open to the interpretation of absolute strangers that have never spoken with us directly and/or associated with us offline. This makes their "impression" extremely lacking. However, I do not believe that to be the case in this situation. I believe that in this situation, we are speaking of troubled individuals that are using the Internet an outlet.

I have encountered someone similar in an MMORPG that I used to play. There was a girl in my guild that was e-dating our guild leader (most wealthy player in the game and most powerful guild in the game) who took advantage of that shared popularity by starting e-drama with other girls in the alliance. Over the course of a year that I played the game, I witnessed how this girl somehow managed to get nude pictures of five different girls within the alliance from their e-boyfriends and spread them all over our alliance's forum, fansite forums, official website forums and sites like livejournal and 4chan. Apparently her hobby consisted of invading the privacy of girls that she did not know and humiliating them by posting personal pictures/details about them all over the Internet, because she thought they deserved it for being such whores.

Now, I can't say that I have the greatest opinion about e-dating in online games or the highest regard for girls that send naked pictures of themselves to absolute strangers so that they can get rare items, but you don't see me becoming directly involved in their lives by going out of my way to harvest pictures of and details about them in order to enact "revenge" by posting it all over the Internet. I mean seriously, WTF? I find the vindictive actions of this girl far more disturbing than those of the girls that were objectifying themselves for pixels in a videogame.

All that I can think of is that people have a level of anonymity online that they feel protects them. This anonymity also makes it a lot easier for them to de-humanize people, as they never have to look directly into somebody's eye or see the anguish on their face that they have caused. All that they ever see is text on a computer screen, which even then is lacking properly conveying a voice as it is without proper tone.

Even if this conduct is confined to the Internet, it is still a symptom of an incredibly weak minded individual IMO, as their actions are indicative of their personality; albeit brought out by their environment and the powers that it provides. If you were to ask me, I would never hire either of these persons, as their repeated behavior reflects of having some kind of severe mental imbalance or problem. Even though many of us could use the Internet to harm others with little risk of answering to consequence, we have the good sensibilities about ourselves not to do so, as we still have basic human respect for others. The implications what one lacking in this respect is capable of are many.

Seriously makes you reconsider just who you do and do not know online and offline. =\
 
I don't think people can have a completely different Internet Self. But even if they can it is very rare, most people that say they have one are just using it as a copout for bad behaviour.

I'm opposite of a lot of people, I'm less mouthy on the internet. Mainly because getting into giant arguements doesn't usually interest me. I am more open on the net, I'd never tell strangers things I've said on here, although I'm fairly mild for this board.
 
Strange, I kept seeing this topic on the front page but thought the 'Internet self' refered to some kind of consciousness or some other wacky idea. I didn't think it was worth checking out. :)

To answer the topic, yeah, I do think some people act differently online. I still think actions speak louder than words so if someone is shy in real life but becomes outgoing online, I have no problem with that. But if they're psycho online, I'd always think they have that potential in IRL as well.
 
In real life, I'm pretty laid back. Online, I'm a lot more mouthy and intentionally try to get a rise out of people. I do that sometimes in real life also.
 
Instigator said:
Strange, I kept seeing this topic on the front page but thought the 'Internet self' refered to some kind of consciousness or some other wacky idea. I didn't think it was worth checking out. :)

To answer the topic, yeah, I do think some people act differently online. I still think actions speak louder than words so if someone is shy in real life but becomes outgoing online, I have no problem with that. But if they're psycho online, I'd always think they have that potential in IRL as well.
Click to expand...

Some of us are also pretty good at getting the crazy out of our system online before we realize how stupid we'd look offline doing/saying some of the same shit. >:)

Edit: Though, unfortunately, some people that read my livejournal do know me in-person and think I'm batshit insane now. "If the walls of my home really were dripping with the blood of autoerotic asphyxia victims, why would your sister still be dating me?!"
 
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