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conuly
Actually, that's not true. I was already thinking about this. But that post is still the one prompting this post, so.
Most of my friends are people I know entirely, or primarily (hi xiggs. Did you know you left your purple towel here?) online. And the close ones, I love dearly (hi guys!). But I wouldn't want to meet many of them/you in real life (sorry). Why, though? It's not because I'm very different in real life than I am online - I'm not a 50-year old guy or anything. And it's not because I'm keeping secrets - no, youse guys certainly don't know everything about me, but you probably wouldn't know that stuff in real life either. It's a puzzle.
Or it was a puzzle until I reflected on something my sister said a few times (hi jenn!). She said I seem more like me online than I do with most people. And she's right. The real me is the person online, most people in real life (excepting my family) only see an image. But this is opposite of all the fears people have. They get scared that the person online is not the real person, that the real person is a stupid abuser who doesn't even tip well (hi eric!). Confronted with the person in real life, wouldn't they be likely to believe that that's the real person, even though the real person is hiding scared?
Um, yeah. So that's it. I really just wouldn't want my friends to think the real me is the person most people see. Because that's not really real. But most people don't know that, because most people are neither my family nor one of my close family friends (hi gale, mommy, lizziey, jennagain...) So they get fakeme, filteredme, personwhodoesn'ttalkmuchme (and you can see why this isn't realme!) and think that's the real person.
And they're wrong.
On a side note, have I ever said how much I love my keyboard? I love typing. It's easy. And it makes a nice clickyclicky noise. And nobody complains that I'm typing too quickly, or too softly, or can I please repeat myself? And nobody says I should use different words, not when they're seeing the words, only when they hear them. For some reason, the same set of words is okay when written but not okay when spoken. Go figure.
Most of my friends are people I know entirely, or primarily (hi xiggs. Did you know you left your purple towel here?) online. And the close ones, I love dearly (hi guys!). But I wouldn't want to meet many of them/you in real life (sorry). Why, though? It's not because I'm very different in real life than I am online - I'm not a 50-year old guy or anything. And it's not because I'm keeping secrets - no, youse guys certainly don't know everything about me, but you probably wouldn't know that stuff in real life either. It's a puzzle.
Or it was a puzzle until I reflected on something my sister said a few times (hi jenn!). She said I seem more like me online than I do with most people. And she's right. The real me is the person online, most people in real life (excepting my family) only see an image. But this is opposite of all the fears people have. They get scared that the person online is not the real person, that the real person is a stupid abuser who doesn't even tip well (hi eric!). Confronted with the person in real life, wouldn't they be likely to believe that that's the real person, even though the real person is hiding scared?
Um, yeah. So that's it. I really just wouldn't want my friends to think the real me is the person most people see. Because that's not really real. But most people don't know that, because most people are neither my family nor one of my close family friends (hi gale, mommy, lizziey, jennagain...) So they get fakeme, filteredme, personwhodoesn'ttalkmuchme (and you can see why this isn't realme!) and think that's the real person.
And they're wrong.
On a side note, have I ever said how much I love my keyboard? I love typing. It's easy. And it makes a nice clickyclicky noise. And nobody complains that I'm typing too quickly, or too softly, or can I please repeat myself? And nobody says I should use different words, not when they're seeing the words, only when they hear them. For some reason, the same set of words is okay when written but not okay when spoken. Go figure.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-12 05:39 pm (UTC)I love your icon. It's from "Shadow of the Hegemon" by Orson Scott Card, right? That rocks. I wish I had thought of it.
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Date: 2004-08-12 06:28 pm (UTC)