AKA: the gap between

We all have many facets to who we are, many sides that make us, us. Depending on the circumstances and who we are with, we show different sides and usually, we broadcast parts of us we want people to see. This means that we hide parts that we want to keep from view.

The internet has thrown new levels of complication into this mix over the last couple decades as it engineers environments and we tend to adjust ourselves based on the platform we act upon, or the people we think are there with us.

We know that places like Facebook and Instagram carry with it a lot of false positive information, I am not talking in a scientific sense now. A lot of people post their highlights of life and skip over the rest. Others however post their low-lights. The reason is the same of course, attention seeking.

I wonder though that if it was possible to overlay these various life views atop each other like one of those medical encyclopedias with the clear if the sum total would give a good representation of who we really are. I would assume not as I don't think most people are as even with their online content as they tend to believe. I do think that it would give an interesting view of our individual lives though as it would create quite a broad picture.

Imagine if that broad picture of yourself from all of those various platforms were sent to some experimental science lab and combined into a Frankenstein human version. Would it be recognisable as you?

How would it look, talk, behave? Would Internet Frankenstein You be a decent human, would you like IFY?

I was thinking about this in the morning and trying to intuit the differences between how 'I' and 'Internet I' see the world and whether I am happy with the variation. It is not that the differences are necessarily so profound as for the most part, I think and feel that the representation is relatively consistent to me but, I cannot know if that is in fact, fact.

What is interesting however are the complications that arise when there are conflicts within us, the hypocrisy between who we want to be and how we act every day, what we want to believe and how often we go against those very beliefs. These conflicts create a lot of pressure on how we see and experience ourselves and lead to a lot of psychological problems and if left to their own devices, can be very harmful to others and ourselves.

I wonder how much these differences between online persona and the known reality are driving the seemingly endless rise in depression and psychological disorders. It is a hard life telling people everything is beautiful across all platforms and then living a reality of feeling disconnected, alone and trapped.

If you went back and looked at your last year of what you have offered the internet, does it really provide any reality to who you actually are or, is it an idealistic view, skewed by how you want friends, family and strangers to view you?

Something to think about at least.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]