04/08/2010 6:00 pm
POV
Finding the Real Me – Virtually
The author of Love Child checks her skepticism at the door of the online world – and becomes a convert.
DC Comics
I hate joining things. In 2007 and 2008, I got the occasional e-mail saying "Alexis, or Rhonda, wants to be your friend on Facebook," and I’d think, "Can’t Alexis, or Rhonda, just be my friend in the real world? They already are, anyway. Why do I need some website with a cheesy name to mediate my friendships?"
I affected ignorance, moral superiority, lack of time, technical ineptitude. But as the publication date of my first book, Love Child,loomed closer, I felt the hot breath of inevitability on the back of my neck. Perhaps Facebook could warm up an indifferent world.
Now here I am a year later, newly techified, getting e-mails titled "How the F**K Batman??" from an author friend trying to coordinate her fan page with her personal page. (I’ve got my own page, a fan page for Love Child and a group page for my current project, a short film called "Good Luck Mr Gorski" – check it out! Join the launch crew!) I’ve never been called "Batman" before, and I like it.
Maybe it was my profile picture that gave her the idea. I am impossibly leggy and lithe with silver hair, spherical breasts and skintight raptor lingerie, and my name slithers across the top in techno-acid green. (This is thanks to my cyberfriend Allegra, who discovered an obscure comic book from 1996.) During the what-color-is-your-bra conversation, at a friend’s suggestion, I put "claw." So much for l’esprit de l’escalier: No more staircase, no more "if only I’d thought of that." On Spaceplant – my mash-up of other people’s "Spacebook" and "Faceplant" – you can borrow your friends’ wit in real time, and stick your second thoughts – and third, and fourth – in the comment string.
My superhero profile picture feels, weirdly, more honest than the photos I used before. The photos – sunlit in L.A., sporty on top of a mountain, emo-posing at an Emo Gas station in Ireland – are each anchored to a particular moment in time, a single facet of my personality. This babe in her raptor bra obviously isn’t me; she doesn’t lie.
Like most people, I am different in the company of different people: indoorsy, outdoorsy, responsible, devil-may-care, motherly, silly, professional. In cyberspace, any of my connections can pick up that kaleidoscope of selves, and look into it. Sure, I wonder if my stepson, or my elderly uncle, will be shocked when I make a post about cowboy porn, for example. (I love posting teasers, and I’m always surprised to see who picks them up and runs with them. Riverboarding was another big success.) But any one person’s experience of me is necessarily limited; my Spaceplant self, like my real self, is the sum total of hundreds of relationships.
Social cyberspace isn’t a parallel universe. It’s our real lives intensified. Instead of going years without talking to a friend, I can now run into them, deliberately or circumstantially, in the cyberspace equivalent of Wal-Mart. Occasionally, someone new breezes in: There they are – a name from 20 years ago, in the lightbulb aisle. We may not have earth-shattering discussions, but then, how often do you anyway? It’s the small talk of a small town that makes the web of warmth and connection. With geography consigned to past centuries, we can each manifest our own small town, and stretch its boundaries at will.
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Oh Allegra how valid your points are….. they made me smile.
You have encapsulted the experieince of the online world perfectly. It is a place where strangers can become friends and enemies without ever truly meeting. A place where we all do indeed set aside our true selves and become different people online.
I often find it curious how I can engage in heated exhanges online with strangers about politics, yet in my real life, in the real world, these discussion never become heated, they are always simply a difference of opinion. Which for me suggests the importance of truly knowing the person you are speaking with, eye contact, body language and the all important fact that you truly know where that person is coming from.
It is impossible to truly form an honest opinion of anyone you only know from an online experience. No matter how nice, sweet, kind, mean of vain you may think someone is, until you meet them face to face and have the chance to truly gauge what they are like, you just don’t know. That is why I never put a lot of stock in online friendships/relationships/connections. Who they say they are and what they are really like in person are always two different animals.
I’m pretty upfront about who I am, what I look like, where I work, it is all verifiable. However I am not the norm. Most people hide behind false avatars and user names. They espouse opinions and beliefs about people they would never in a million years say eye to eye. They find solace in the anonymous world of the internet. That’s the downside of the internet.
The upside is the fact that it does connect us to the entire planet. Just think about it. It’s 3 a.m. and you are restless. You get up and log onto your computer. In the year 2010 we now have the capability to log onto a computer and like that we can connect with people right around the corner or on the other side of the world! Chat about a million different subjects from a million different websites. I find that fascinating.
Outside of WOW and my own web outlets, I really do not spend time interacting on the web with other sites, using cyber more as a research tool for what I do otherwise in life. I go on the theory the mountain didn’t come to Mohammed, he went to the mountain. In trying to build a business I read the bios and try to find as much information on facilities or people I am going to contact before approaching them and getting a better feel as to whether they would be a likely contact in using my gut reaction to what I do know as being a feasible approach. So far it has worked pretty well and gotten me through physical doors I am not sure I would have otherwise.
Dearest Allegra, so happy to see not only another wonderful and stimulating article by you, but I see you will be a regular contributor to this fabulous wowOwow site as well.
I too am a relatively late adopter of social media but a very social and chatty person and until I found your article "What is it about Adam Lambert?" had not found a community with which I felt a kinship. Suddenly a whole community sprouted and we became a supportive group who could write and express themselves so well.
Indeed, you are to blame for the obsession which took over my life after reading your magical piece that threw some sort of inspirational pixie glitter over me and compelled me to write 24/7.
How wonderful to get to know you as a fellow Adam fan and a marvelous writer. I read Love Child and savoured each word you wrote, felt the air, saw the rooms - experienced each vignette you painted for us. More than an autobiography, it reads like a novel - a updated Dickensian drama of a motherless girl, seeking her own soul, her family.
Can’t wait for Mr. Gorski - your treatment is so good.
Thanks for mentioning our book which grew directly from your inspiration and permission to not just feel, but write about seeking the Meaning of Adam Lambert.
Xena