An author once wrote, "A conventional liar needs a good memory." When you take on an identity that is not your own, you need to remember every little detail you consciously or even subconsciously pass on to the other party in the conversation. This is a lot harder than telling the simple truths about yourself. Thus, impression management becomes a lot more difficult when you take on some identity other than your own.
I chose to go into a chatroom and pose as a male college student of 20 years of age because I figured this persona is different enough from my real person to be a challenge yet close enough that it wouldn't be as hard to manage as, say, a 50-year old neurosurgeon. I picked a conspicuously masculine name (Jaggernaut), more for my own sake so I could fit in more snuggly with this persona. I was surprised to discover that now I minded a lot more to whom I was actually talking. If it was a female, I had to make sure I don't let any feminine tone get across while not sounding like egoistic. If it was a male, I had to be careful not to overdo the "masculinity" of the persona so I could avoid detection. It was a very fine line to walk: between sounding too "sissy" and too "tough." Either would invite easy detection.
With the name "Jaggernaut," a lot fewer guys talked to me (contrary to previous chatroom visits). I'm used to letting others take the initiative and private message me, so this time I had to first go out of my comfort zone by PMing others, mostly girls. Maybe it was the nature of the chatroom I was in, but I always got the feeling that same-sex PMing doesn't happen a lot, so I didn't want to alert any guys by PMing them as a guy. That is perhaps one of the first crucial steps of my impression management.
As I started talking to various "girls" (for all I know, they could be "fakes" like me), I noticed that I had to initiate a lot of conversations by actively seeking them. Instead of being asked "ASL?", I was now the one to ask it, to be the pursuer instead of the pursued. I had to be a lot more willing to describe myself to get the other party to open up about themselves. Even with this "aggression," I tried to be as gentle as I could and not press my "masculinity" on anyone. I tried to make smart conversation instead of going after the sexual aspects, as so many guys in this chatroom are sometimes prone to do. I'm definitely more comfortable with smart conversation, but I also realize that it can be much more revealing and devastating to my deception as the other party digs deeper into my persona and I'm forced to uncover facets that may very well expose my ignorance in things my persona should have great knowledge in.
As I was describing my online deception adventure just now, I was quite surprised by how much this persona is my ought self, or at least the qualities I think a great conversationalist should possess. I basically created a persona that I would want to talk to. I think that subconsciously I felt that if I wanted to talk to this person, every other girl would. The persona represents some of my ideal self as well- the assertive person who takes initiative. And then, since I was hidden in the anonymity of the Internet and even buried deeper in this fake persona, inhibitions definitely dropped, and I felt some true self came through, since I didn't have to worry too much about impressing the other person. In fact, I didn't want to impress her so much that she fell in love with this guy I was creating. That would be quite cruel, something none of my selves want.
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What I found most interesting about your piece was the idea that your switch to the male role forced you to become the initiator of conversation in the chat room. I think that it is fascinating how certain gender-specific roles can be found in all media channels. You had to take on the “masculine” role and ask, “ASL?” while last week I am sure that there were five people at a time asking the same question to you. To think about your post in terms of identity-based digital deception, your experience would fall into the title of category deception. Based on your comment about being hidden in the anonymity of the internet, it seems that your experience would follow the concept behind the social distance theory, in that lying is an uncomfortable situation. Therefore, people will be more able to play a different role when hidden behind the comfort of their own computer screen, as opposed to a richer means of communication such as ftf, in which you clearly could not have feigned being a boy without exposing yourself as a girl. Your choice of private message for deception was also fitting with the feature-based model of deception, in that it was basically synchronous, distributed, and only slightly recordable. It seems that you really chose the best means of communication for the type of deception that you decided to exercise.
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