Online Identity

Like countless other teenagers in the twenty-first century, I am not who I am online.  I am not the awkward, clumsy, introverted boy who spends nights listening to Fiona Apple alone in his room.  I am not flawed and I don’t let anything inhibit me.  I am a better version of me, a boy who doesn’t know the Harrison that lives and breathes.  The internet allows dweebs like myself to pick away at scabs of imperfection and give themselves a persona to feel comfortable with, even if it isn’t their own.  These people we create for ourselves can be comforting, but becoming too fond of them can be dangerous for the psyche.  The key to maintaining reality is knowing who you are online differs from the real you, a line that is easily crossed by the best of us.

Visuals are the primary component of the online persona.  My Facebook pictures cannot contain boils or blemishes.  They don’t show any pudgy parts or unflattering areas of my body.  I am the physical appearance of what I want to be, and I make sure everyone appreciates it too.  I am not gay on Facebook, I am asexual.  My religious views are “Jesus can suck it” and I quote The Great Gatsby, even though I barely read the book in eleventh grade English.  I upload whimsical, eccentric pictures from my webcam that are totally contrived, but somehow manage to appear effortless.  I don’t keep posts up for very long if nobody responds to them.  I feed off of the attention, something I rarely do in real life.

People that see the person I am online could have several impressions of me.  They could possibly see me as a charming, sexually ambiguous, free-spirited boy from a teen novel.  They could see me as a boy with too much time on his hands and not enough focus on school or anything else that matters.  They could also see me as a desperate, attention craved loser who lives on the internet.  Whatever they see I hope it’s cute, and I hope that they don’t read as much into my online persona as I do.  In real life I don’t take myself too seriously.  I am level-headed and always willing to help a friend in need.  Those who know the real me are the ones that matter, and my superficial Facebook friends will never measure up.  Even if they do validate my existence, sort of.