Split personalities
by Steve
I remember as a kid being on holiday and going to some sort of country fête-type thing. On one of the stalls was this guy with a CB radio. I was fascinated by the idea that from this one box this guy could communicate with people from around the world. He asked me to name a country and said he’d try to find someone to talk to from there. I said Tristan da Cunha, and he unsurprisingly couldn’t find anyone. I wasn’t a smart arse, I promise. I just liked Tristan da Cunha for some reason. And I liked the idea of speaking to other people over the radio. I liked the handles they used, the anonymity and the freedom.
Anyway, several years later I was all grown up and had my first proper home computer. I’d dabbled with the internet a bit, but now I had my very own dial-up connection I was free to spend hours ‘surfing’ or at least ambling around the web trying to find something interesting. What really grabbed my attention was the ability to reach out and communicate with people across the world. And while the technology was obviously far more involved, it didn’t seem a world away from CB radio.
I was a little late for the golden age of newsgroups, this was the start of the new millennium, but it was a time when online forums were popular and widespread. Social media has always existed on the internet, it is nothing new, it just gets dressed up in different ways. Forums were great in that if you found the right places you found like-minded people with interesting views and ideas. You might just lurk, listen in, find out the relevant information. Or you might get involved, start having conversations with people across the world. You could make it what you want, or if not, go somewhere else.
And much like the world of CB radio, it was generally pretty anonymous. Everyone had a handle, many were anonymous and even those who weren’t anonymous were still strangers. This was a world unto itself, it wasn’t an extension of the real world.
Nowaways being anonymous online is distrusted and unusual. Everyone is themselves, or a version of themselves. Our online spaces have a great deal of crossover with our real-life spaces. Sometimes we use the likes of Facebook as a surrogate for real friendship – we don’t need to meet up when we can just ‘Like’.
Yet this crossover isn’t any more honest or real than that prior anonymity. It is perhaps less so. It is hard to be truly honest online when you are speaking to real-life friends. It is hard to say what you think when a current or potential employer might be reading. It matters more if someone misreads your tone, or gets upset with what you say.
When we reveal our real identities online we start heading down that slippery slope towards presenting ourselves as a ‘brand’. When the line between the real and online worlds blurs we have to be more careful, more calculating, be more aware of what people might think of us.
When we are ‘public’ online we present the version of ourselves we want people to see. When we are anonymous we present the version of ourselves we want to be. The anonymous communicator is more aspirational in that sense, or at least more willing to take risks and say something more interesting.
Naturally many anonymous communicators then become trolls, as there are no real-life consequences. Yet plenty of people communicating under their real name behave pretty appallingly too. Insisting on real names is no guarantee for civility.
I guess I was thinking about this as I’m kind of in a strange in-between space now. I am semi-anonymous. My full name is on Facebook, but not really anywhere else. My Facebook doesn’t link to here or my Twitter account. A few ‘real-world’ people follow me on Twitter and know that I blog, but that is a reasonably recent thing. I still find it really odd when someone I know asks me about blogging. I don’t feel offended or anything, but I do perhaps feel a little awkward. Maybe that is because when I started using the internet it was easy and standard practice to compartmentalize between the real and the online, and now that isn’t so. Maybe it is because it doesn’t matter if my writing is sup-par if I’m only writing for strangers, but when people I know read it then it matters more. Maybe it is just because writing online is a little dorky.
Either way, I quite like some degree of separation. I don’t want to be that guy who talks about his blog at parties. I don’t want to miss the opportunities to communicate with new people across the world, because I’m concentrating so much on real-life people, yet concentrating so much on those real-life people online that I don’t actually see them, well, in real-life. And maybe I’m still that odd kid wanting to speak to someone in Tristan da Cunha. Yet I’m slowly growing more comfortable with that blurring between the two worlds.
I’m aware that when I say “CB radio” I may, in fact, mean some other sort of public radio system. Apologies if that is the case, and I welcome any comments from radio experts who can set me straight. I am a terrible fact checker.
Image from National Archives of Norway
Great post. I’ve been blogging off and on for a decade now, and the degree to which you share your online persona with the real world/vice versa is a delicate balance. Since I’m no longer an anonymous blogger, for now anyway, I feel like I could give a good counterpoint. Look for a post either this week or early next.
Your writing is not sub par, for what it’s worth. Your blog is one of my must-read sites on the internet!
Ham radio, maybe? Also, I had never heard of Tristan de Cunha. I learned something new!
LikeLike
Thanks Mike – I look forward to reading a counterpoint, especially as I’m not entirely sure where I stand now!
I wondered about ham radio. Maybe I’ll just have to do some research, or maybe not!
LikeLike
I tried to make this into a post but it felt like it would work better as a comment.
Basically, I had two big realizations in re writing/blogging this year: I decided to use my real name when I realized that more people might take it a little more seriously. I’d like to get more things out there beyond my personal blog. So attaching my name has to be the next step. And I figure my writing is better than a lot of what’s on the Internet anyway–even proper spelling and mostly correct punctuation are significant victories–so there’s no shame in having my name attached.
The tradeoff is, like you said, is the tendency to put myself in check a little more. Nothing you wouldn’t say in front of your grandma, etc. But I’ve managed to come to terms with self-restraint, because my second realization was that if I’m going to put something together that’s personal or takes a lot of effort, people are going to have to pay for it first. That probably sounds harsh, but I worry about the psychological effects of the economics of blogging so I really want something in return. If a blogger’s aim is self-expression, I can easily see how things could dovetail into an endless cycle of oversharing for reader’s attention followed by the crushing defeat of failing to connect followed by oversharing etc. In my defense, payment doesn’t necessarily have to be financial; I had a friend tell me this week that he liked my blog post about architecture, so I will probably put up another couple of posts along those lines down the road.
So the two realizations make perfect sense to me, but they are at odds–my writing is good enough to share, but I don’t want to share all my good writing without some sort of compensation. I’m convinced it’s the right way to go; I’ve had this blog for just a couple of months now, and it’s already received more outside attention than previous efforts. Blogging, then, becomes sort of a balancing act, one I haven’t quite calibrated perfectly yet.
LikeLike
Thanks for such an involved response Mike. This feels like a huge issue to unpick, the kind of unpicking that probably deserves some sort of repayment!
I think some form of self-restraint is a good trait if you’re anonymous or public. I find that online oversharing is at best a little uncomfortable and at worst basically emotional porn. I don’t think there are many oversharing pieces that are written well either, craft seems to take a backseat when someone is concentrating on being ‘honest’. And as much as I’m sure we all find ourselves fascinating, navel-gazing doesn’t always make for a great read.
The payment issue, be it cash or something less obvious, is an interesting one. I think my ‘payment’ is that I enjoy writing, and this place motivates me to write reasonably regularly. I don’t have huge ambitions in terms of a writing career, and if I did I think I’d explore more fruitful avenues than the blogging world. Readers are nice, but not essential, and it is rare that I worry overly about creating appealing content. I write what I’d like to read.
I have a few (unfulfilled, unstarted) writing ideas that go beyond blogging and I would certainly aim to either get some sort of ‘payment’ or keep them hidden in a draw somewhere. I think the compromise with blogging is that while there is no payment, there is immediacy in terms of publishing and feedback, and I can pretty much write what I want, and put in as little or as much effort as I want. If I was worrying about payment or my ‘brand’, I might not write as much as I might feel frozen by other concerns. I might also freeze if I started plugging my writing more in the real world.
A lot to think about!
LikeLike
Right on! I admire the intrinsic motivation of writing for its own sake. I can do that with jogging because the runner’s high hits after only about 30 minutes, but with very thoughtful blogging, the effort/feedback ratio doesn’t hit all my pleasure points. I’m starting to get sold on the excitement that comes with waiting for the rejection note.
LikeLike
As a follow-up, I saw this article in the NYT. A much more eloquent defense of asking for payment for writing.
LikeLike
The post creates good food for thought. I just permantely deleted my account with facebook. It had been deactivated for quite some time, but just recently decided to go “full tilt”. I have been thinking about rejoining anonymously.But it’s the shallow content on facebook that will keep me away. I find it easier to just be myself in the blog world. I really don’t know why. I have never really put much thought into until now. hmmm. Thanks for writing!
LikeLike
Facebook seems to be a bit of a minefield and generally a bit of a pain. I tend to steer clear as it is full of bored parents posting pictures of their beloved children and people sharing terrible memes and chain-letter-esque posts. I certainly wouldn’t get into the sort of discussions I get into here/on other blogs/Twitter etc, and Facebook doesn’t seem like the right place for it anyway. All the interesting people are elsewhere!
LikeLike
Going to respectfully disagree here. I really enjoy Facebook. I have friends scattered across the country, and sometimes it’s nice to see what they’re thinking about. Even if we’re on there because we’re bored, it’s nice to see that there’s sort of a collective boredom, like regular season baseball.
LikeLike
I guess it depends on the friends/acquaintances you accumulate over the years, and which ones still use Facebook regularly. I can see how it still works for some people, but I’m normally a bit annoyed/frustrated when I visit.
LikeLike