During the entire month of April, I’m participating in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. The alphabet will be my motivation, though the content of the posts will be very similar to what regular readers are used to. Check out the link for more amazing bloggers, and enjoy April!
Online culture fascinates me. For the decades I’ve been doing this online thing (okay, ‘decades’ is an exaggeration, it’s only been 18 years), I’ve used it as a chance to people watch. I know, a lot of people go outside to people watch. To the mall. To restaurants, shops, diners, bookstores, whatever.
Outside is okay for it too. But online…there’s something different about being online.
You can be anyone you want online. I know sites like Google and Facebook are moving toward making us all use our real names, but even on Facebook I don’t use my real name. So, anonymity is an option online.
We have this power to create new personas, to live lifes we’ve never lived, to pretend we’re something we’ll never be. And yet, most people are more prone to be exactly who they are online. Moreso than they’d ever be in real life.
Even if they call themselves Freddy Mercury and claim they’re the reincarnation of the famous singer and only post pictures of themselves shirtless and wearing suspenders and always talk about how much they miss touring. Who they are will usually show through. Whether they’re cruel, kind, silly, serious, intellectual, lazy, contemptuous…whatever.
It’s so difficult to defy our nature. And I think that’s dangerous. There’s a reason we keep certain things close in real life interactions. It’s not appropriate to break out in a screaming tantrum in the middle of a grocery story. Why do we think it’s okay online?
Then again, if we’re used to being walked in in real life, and we use this chance at self-discovery to explore the option of saying ‘no’ kindly, that’s a good thing.
What do you think? Is the anonimity of the internet, and the way it allows us to be our real selves, positive or detrimental to our growth as individuals and a society?
For me, the internet has similar effects to those that physical masks do. They provide an illusion of anonymity that only serves to bring out the parts that we normally keep carefully hidden.
Tantrums are always bad. And I have seen people (older than 3) throw them in the grocery store.
What it comes down to is that we believe we don’t have to control ourselves as much around 1) people we love and trust and 2) people of lesser status than we are. So in both cases we can show socially unacceptable emotions without feeling like we’ll be punished for them–in one case because the person loves us and understands, in another because the person is less powerful than we are.
Both dynamics come into play online. I can vent to my friends who will do the friend thing of patting my hand and giving me chocolate. Or I can go troll someone’s comment section and relieve my anger by picking on them for being dumber or uglier or whatever.
I would say having more friends is usually a good thing. Having more people that I can view as lower status than me–more people to use as punching bags–is always a bad thing.
If you really believe that you should be kind to others (even dumb ugly people), then you have to be kind online as well as in real life. Because–big surprsie here–your online life *is* part of your real life. If you’re a jerk online, that means you’re a jerk. Period.
I think writing online is great for shy people like me–we can “say” things we would never say in real life. However, I think many people abuse this freedom and use it for negative purposes–especially some teens.
I think you are spot on in the fact that being online is the ultimate people “watching” experience. I do think that many people don’t connect their online personas to real life consequences of their bad behavior–which is not appealing to me at all. My definition of integrity is to be whole–and if I’m splitting my life into pieces and parts to accommodate my poor choices, then I don’t really have integrity at all…
Great post! I’m swinging by from A to Z, and a new follower too.
http://www.diaryofasquaretoothedgirl.blogspot.com