The dangers of Internet anonymity have caught up with me. A writer by trade, I tend to let my imagination run, just making shit up as I go along. This is where it becomes unfortunate that I harbor such creativity, and, for that matter, a computer. In this forum, I can be virtually anyone, not simply the girl in black in the corner, but the exotic foreigner with style and grace, the skeletal model of perfection, the pop goddess, the mysterious muse.
I can convince people I am anyone I choose to be on a given day, again, just making shit up. I tend to abuse this freedom, drawing people into my stories as I compose them, testing my new characters in the “real world” before putting them on paper. It is a sort of creative outlet, a way to see how convincingly I can write, and I’m really quite good at portraying the players of my facade. I find it almost scary that I can so aimlessly play on people’s thoughts and what I know about them to wrap them up in my mental gymnastics. It is a dangerous and addictive thing to toy with, even if you use it for something productive such as character development in writing. I don’t trust myself to be real in my outside dealings with others if I can’t even be real with a keyboard. I suppose I’m having a bit of a moral crisis over this whole idea…
9 comments ↓
just remember that writing isn’t acting. a writer shouldn’t “become” his characters. certainly he should understand, respect, even love them, but should never take on their persona, unless it is autobiographical. for if you become one character, you then have to become them all, and this will cause an intellectual stalemate. it will remove logical progression in a story, and it will wipe out any sense of cohesiveness.
as a writer, you will understand the difficulty in answering this question: “if you ‘become’ all of your characters, don’t you then feel some kind of obligation towards them? don’t you then want them all to win?”
I’ve done the same… pretended to be someone who I am not, a release of pent up emotions… a chance to be who I always wanted to be, or someone I dream of being… its fun….
Worry not about the other person’s reaction to you being who you aren’t, for all’s you know they are doing the same thing…
Redneck at heart,
AcidBoy
it seems to me tha most of the people on the internet are not telling the truth about themselves. at least you have a good reason to be someone you’re not, unlike the men claiming to be women so they can fulfill some desire they have kept hidden in the so-called real world, or the kids pretending to be older than they are so someone will listen to them. at least your pretense is not malice-filled or sure to cause harm to someone. as long as you are not claiming to be in love with anyone or giving anyone dreams you don’t plan to fulfill, i see no harm in trying out characters on the internet. just try not to become one yourself. therein lies true pain.
I wouldn’t be overly concerned. I think you should only feel guilty about it if you’re trying to get something with that persona.
If, when testing your characters, you’re doing it in a relatively anonymous manner, then there should be no problem.
However, if you are forming relationships with those characters, then you have to take a step back and look. That would make you wonder what you were hiding in the first place.
If you depend on your characters personalities to get you ahead, or friends or to be liked, then you are in trouble.
But, stop and think for a moment. The only reason that character exists at all is because of you. Some aspect of you is in that character. Which means that what ever personality you are trying to emulate in that character, really can be you.
However, if your using that personality to get a certain kind of person or friend, that can lead to problems. Because ultimately, you won’t be happy in that personality.
But joining a random chat room as that character doesn’t really carry too much in the way of problems.
~Kitashla
I wouldn’t sweat it too badly, Em. Most people know that the internet is fraught with disingenuous people all pretending to be soemthing they clearly are not.
But the flipside to that are the emotional wreckages who data dump. So, which would you rather be: the rail-thin goddess of perfection, a basketcase or the girl in black sitting in the corner who occasionally takes license with the truth?
In either event, there’s no moral crisis.
shadowgod
Reading your statement on “making stuff” is correct and i feel that yes the internet makes for a good facade and yes me like you could virtually be anyone, some Jock,Punk rocker Anarchist, closet queer,
or just some Fundamentalist Fuck-up……
My ex boyfriend actually does the same thing. I met him in a chat room online (i know it sounds tasteless?) and the way that he got into my life was by making up bullshit. At the time i started talking to him, my cousins hard recently died in a car accident and we started talking about it. he told me that his own cousin had died a few years ago and that “he know what i was going through”. I was looking for someone to talk to about it and i really thought we had a lot in common and that he understood me. WELL! wasn’t i the fool. In the whole 11 months that i dated him and was blinded by my love for him, he lied to me. Everything he ever told me about his life and thinsg that happened to him was all made up. Not a thing he said was real…not even when he told me he loved me did he mean it.
Sometimes making shit up doesn’t matter. it doesn’t hurt people all the time and it can be harmless. But what i went through wasn’t. The guy that i was in love with lied to me constantly to change himself, to make out his life was more “fucked up” than it really was, to get sympathy from people and to get love from girls so he himself could feel loved. Even now he uses me breaking up with him to get sympathy from others..if you were to ask him about me he’sd tell you that i was the one that cheated on him when infact it’s around the other way.
Be careful what you say to people..it could hurt them greatly.
Ouch.
i’m sorry you were hurt by someone’s immaturity and thoughtlessness. i am always so careful not to develop emotional ties with those i may “test” a character on. i could never hurt someone by using their emotional state for my own purposes and exploiting it like that. it’s terrible that someone felt that they could do that to you.