me & tomfoolery

Online Personas

How many times can you say, you've looked at someone's profile photo on a platform and instantly stacked them with a bunch of personality attributes that might not fit them at all?

I can admit I've done that. It started with Twitter. I mean that platform in 2011-2015 was raw, everyone said what they wanted, even if no one saw it. A lot of it was to fit in, or to be seen in hopes of getting that hit tweet.

Sound familiar?

Difference is now... people will look up your past, they'll even post your work, school, address to finish you in an online battle. It's best to just be yourself, even if you're a terrible person. Someone somewhere will always find a way. You might as well get caught up being you or being exposed right?

Online personas are also a big thing on this orange and white fever dream app. Unless your work is promoted or co-signed by the app, you've appeared at the conference, your work that started here has been taken down, and published outside of this app, your work has been turned into a movie then, there's no need for any form of hierarchy.

There's a big difference between imposter and imposter syndrome.

Imposter is a fake, a phony. The syndrome, is when people who are in-fact THAT believe they're not due to others in the room also being capable or in fact they're the true imposters.

1. If you won't go into a store and Rob it, don't steal someone's work online.

2. If you're not the type to get into a fight in a public place, don't resort to fighting words.

3. And I think this one is my favorite: if you're not the type of person who will go against authority in real life, disputing an employer, challenging a professor, correcting a service worker, then the absolute gull to challenge a series of events in a story in the manner that y'all do, should stop.

It's one thing to be timid, it's one to be socially awkward. But to only be brave in a setting you can hide in... and your bravery isn't brave, it's bullying and elitism. Just strange behavior.

People get a kick out of hiding behind profile photos and assumed identities in hopes no one can see the real them.  But eventually that shows the more people encounter you by observation, and one on one conversations.

I wrote a short story on here about the Cam Girl lifestyle. The original inspiration, for the story came after watching, Cam (available on Netflix) at a film festival. Once I saw the movie, I told anyone I could about it. Of course, I was familiar with the world of online rendezvous's, or sexual fantasies displayed behind the screen, but not at the capacity. In which that movie opened my eyes to a strange, parallel universe. After that, of course, I saw more films under that same premise, all leading to a dangerous downfall. Now, of course, I'm speaking on this movie in terms of splits personas online versus in person.

Although the movies that I am referring to have a sexual nature, and people on the social media platforms, may not inherently have that. It is still important to see the extremes that people will go through to portray that they are the complete opposite, and/or ashamed of who they are in real life versus what they get to showcase online.

Content creation has that form of online personas, you know the type:

All of our favorite IG girlies with the neutral colored lululemon, Chanel bag, almond shaped French tips, itips with the black buss down middle part, and all that jazz.

Do we know where it came from? Do we know when it ends? Some have their own look within it all, and others are a copy and paste of the same thing they saw on YouTube and snagged from an Amazon store front.

There's more layers to be uncovered out there and it starts with not caring about how people perceive you, especially when they don't get to see you. You could be yourself and your people will find you. Building an empire or a support group based on following someone else's blueprint, that isn't authentic and it only has a one lane threshold.

Me & An Author's Notes:

This conversation has a lot of layers but after talking to a group of very catty middle schoolers, they shared all of their issues about this topic and it already correlated with long thoughts about media.

Y'all be good now. I have more convos and takes like these, feel free to engage 💚