Topic 2: Having more than one online identities.

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With the increase of the Internet popularity people started to prefer spending their time online over other daily activities they used to do before – watching TV, doing hobbies, even family time. We certainly cannot judge whether it’s good or bad. Every generation has its positive and negative sides and judging them by the rules that probably can no longer be applied is pointless. We just have to accept the situation.

Before I start: This text is filled with lots of personal opinion; it does cover the topic, but mostly covers my view on difference between identity and personality. I didn’t supply any references as no article or book affected my point of view (Indirectly probably?) and there is no material used from someone else.

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Internet identity has a close relationship with your personality; it’s your unique way of expressing thoughts and ideas, sharing your views on different subjects and use of words and phrases. It’s closely related to your day to day behavior, speech and thoughts. It’s basically you, using the Internet to reach various information or people; the way you operate on the web, communicate and share – all show your personality traits. But have you noticed that in some cases an Internet identity is different from one’s personality? One may seem as a completely different person… and there’s always a reason for that.

Uniqlo-Metal-Gear-Solid-Box Sometimes there is something different within yourself that you want or need to show. For example: you are using swear words in your speech on a daily basis; there’s absolutely no problem with that when you are surrounded by friends, but when family or relatives around, you start filtering your language. Another example: You are a hot-headed person, always up for dares and doing bizarre stuff every day. When you are at a job interview you probably wouldn’t mention those inappropriate things about yourself; even though it’s you. So, you are not changing completely, but changing the image of yourself in a way that fits the society around you.

The same thing happens on the Internet, where you adapt, and use obtained knowledge to express yourself in a way you are expected to do so. The most important thing is that even if you have two identities, they cannot complete each other, there must be inconsistencies¹. You cannot like and hate something at the same time – you might have mixed feelings about it. So it leads us to an idea that you cannot have two personalities. You might think that you have, by putting on different masks and pretending to be someone else, but that’s just a play, it’s not personality – that’s identity – something you can freely change and create. Inside you are still the same. If you actually had 2 different personalities within you, you would have probably been taken away by mental disorder services.

Your identity is a form of your personality, but your identity can be changed in a variety of ways, even be made up. Same examples where you adapt yourself to different conditions and behave in a different manner are not changing your personality. You are changing your identity. Personality changes by itself with your self-developing. But your identity is something you can work around with.

So what’s up with those who have more than one Internet identities?

Once again – they have reasons to do that. And there could be plenty – playing tricks on somebody, using it for career need, disguising etc. Anywhere you see somebody impersonating someone else, pretending to be a completely different person than they actually are, means this person is using their second identity. Even if the outcome in most of those situations is controversial, we cannot say for sure whether it’s actually good or bad to have and use second identity.

Another interesting thing to note is when people are having more than one accounts on the websites. In some cases they use it to post materials for other audience (a bit more professional approach) – that is not a second identity, that’s still the same person, but he accent on something about himself or on something he knows, and there is a need for a separate audience for that. Almost the same thing where people use second accounts for communicating with certain group of people. In this situation they divert attention from their first account – posts and people they have in there, and accent more on having a certain image for this group of people on a second account. They do not create second identity as they are not changing facts about themselves but focusing attention on something else while masking their other traits. Which once again shows that identity can be changed in a way you want it to, and second identity is something that is not you, something which cannot be combined with the first one.