OK, where was I? Oh yes.
The other night I joined Second Life and realised how many alternate identifies I had, and yet a there were a number of threads. I generally portray myself as female, even in RP games & on-line, where no one can actually see you. I feel comfortable like that. I know a lot of guys who (in RP / Online) portray as female - and for a lot of them (thankfully) its just cause thats [a] fun bor [b] what they want to look at on the computer screen!
But I stick to female. And in Second life have even had a go at looking somewhat like me - I may even post a screen cap of her, one day when the damn camera works (and I can figure out how to do it from the front without looking a total dork)!
So, how do the people I meet there know I am real? Underneath all of the pixels? Its come up in games (MMORPGs) - Bots which do stuff a la the Turing test and fool people into thinking they are human. Reason? to garner *whatever* for the player, sometimes to sell it onwards.
Sigh.
Mostly it goes back to something I have written about before: Masks.
Masks are the identities and labels you wear each and every day - Cat lover/owner, *Job Title*, Collegue, The one with the weird laugh, the blonde, the Wife, Sci-Fi geek, Discworld Fan, and so on.
Aspects of personality ~ In a real sense they are all you in that they come from you, even when you are faking it, it can show, but to fake it well it has to be within you somewhere, some corner of your psyche.
So what do people see when they see me?
Often I think it is worse than it is - especially at work when I am (thankfully) often told how good I am at my job. But I know how bad I really am and think if only I could do it better then...... then I wonder exactly how bad others must be that I appear so good next to them :P
It is now late so I may continue this anon.
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