My, it’s a while since I’ve been here. Still feeling the writers block associated with knowing that I will self-censor what I write because I don’t have total anonymity here.
This weeks work had me musing on the differences between IRL identity and online identity. Especially interesting was the idea of how online identity may contain “performative ambiguity” and contain projections of our inner fantasies. With our IRL identity we tend to conform more to societies norms and are constrained to behave within the shell of personality that others expect of us. This constraining force is not nearly as powerful in cyberspace, (a weak force?), and allows us to experiment with who we might be and might become. Cyberspace then becomes something of a sandbox to try out new combinations of our parts of self. A place to work through our issues, resistances and blocks. Constrained to be a macho male IRL? Try out getting in touch with those gentler sensitive parts of your psyche by changing your online gender and notice how differently we are treated by male online participants. Need to develop some assertive skill IRL – go try some different player behaviour and see what reaction you get from others within the safety of a game environment. The virtual world is unique in its potential to explore parts of ourselves that couldn’t be explored at all before or if they could carried an associated real risk of some loss (e.g. job, partner…) or other consequence (e.g. ostracism, marginalisation) .
