real self / virtual self
so many times i've heard or read people speaking about how false our virtual identity could be: they all say that the personality we have on chatlines, blogs, forums - in a word: on the internet - is very different from the one we have in real life. By this assumption, they argue that our internet-identity is a false one.
i don't agree. this is not always true, at least it absolutely is not for me.
my virtual self is very similar to the real one. the difference lays in this: my virtual self has no social conventions to respect, often it has no "historic memory" of me - by which i mean that i don't have to follow the trace of what i've been or said or wrote or done in the past, i don't have to be coherent with the "character" i'm in people's head
the internet is a chance for all of us to be more coherent to ourselves
but still it is a good chance to fake, too. but then, isn't our personality also revealed by the lies we say?