marrus (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} marrus) wrote,@ 2009-06-28 17:45:00 |
|
How teh intrawebz haz changed things...
...for one, how many different people I’ve become, depending in which forum someone meets me.
On MySpace, I’m distant. I show up briefly to the party, glance about, note the tumbleweeds, maybe say something pithy, more often not, and leave. I’m not very friendly.
On FaceBook, I’m a sound-byte. I slice-of-life-post. I promote, briefly. I hunt down cherished people who I wish I’d never lost track of. I remind myself of that face I see once a year in a far away town with whom I might be REAL friends - if only we lived on the same coast. It’s friendship as short attention-span theatre. It makes me sad, but the tool is useful.
On LinkedIn, I was independent. Confident. But it was the wrong venue for what I do (it’s a business networking site), and packed up. Too many people asked me for “recommendations” when I’d met them once, or painted their ankle 15 years ago. That does not a “working relationship” make. I shut it down.
On LJ, I’m as true to myself as I know how to be. I hold forth. I query. I poke. I ponder. I hope to inspire, teach, catalyze, entertain. I post art. I share fears. And I shove the whole shebang at FaceBook, in the off-chance that someone might care to drop beneath the surface.
Four different personalities. Four ways for people to relate to one flesh-and-blood woman. None of them really me.
As much as I try to be transparent, as fully one person as I know how to be, I realize there’s a whole different girl at a renaissance faire. A BDSM show. A swinger’s event. Making groceries. A bar in New Orleans, as opposed to a bar in Manhattan. Alone in my studio.
Heraclitus said, “You can never step in the same river twice.” Everything changes around us, constantly. How much of who we think we are is us, how much is fluid, impressed by our surroundings, our friends, our desires?
Perhaps this fractalizing of web personae IS truth.
...for one, how many different people I’ve become, depending in which forum someone meets me.
On MySpace, I’m distant. I show up briefly to the party, glance about, note the tumbleweeds, maybe say something pithy, more often not, and leave. I’m not very friendly.
On FaceBook, I’m a sound-byte. I slice-of-life-post. I promote, briefly. I hunt down cherished people who I wish I’d never lost track of. I remind myself of that face I see once a year in a far away town with whom I might be REAL friends - if only we lived on the same coast. It’s friendship as short attention-span theatre. It makes me sad, but the tool is useful.
On LinkedIn, I was independent. Confident. But it was the wrong venue for what I do (it’s a business networking site), and packed up. Too many people asked me for “recommendations” when I’d met them once, or painted their ankle 15 years ago. That does not a “working relationship” make. I shut it down.
On LJ, I’m as true to myself as I know how to be. I hold forth. I query. I poke. I ponder. I hope to inspire, teach, catalyze, entertain. I post art. I share fears. And I shove the whole shebang at FaceBook, in the off-chance that someone might care to drop beneath the surface.
Four different personalities. Four ways for people to relate to one flesh-and-blood woman. None of them really me.
As much as I try to be transparent, as fully one person as I know how to be, I realize there’s a whole different girl at a renaissance faire. A BDSM show. A swinger’s event. Making groceries. A bar in New Orleans, as opposed to a bar in Manhattan. Alone in my studio.
Heraclitus said, “You can never step in the same river twice.” Everything changes around us, constantly. How much of who we think we are is us, how much is fluid, impressed by our surroundings, our friends, our desires?
Perhaps this fractalizing of web personae IS truth.
