No one shares all of who they are online. We share snippets, frozen moments, and smiling images. Some share to learn, others to reflect, others to seek attention. What’s clear is that we are not our public or online persona.
Writing and sharing daily, I’m keenly aware that I share a lot more than others do. How is this perceived by others? I’ve had some surprising feedback, some of it good, some of it disappointingly bad. I’ve even had it questioned if this was somehow taking away from my work day. That would have made me laugh if it wasn’t, at the time, so upsetting. I wrote a scathing retort that will probably never leave my drafts. It was cathartic enough just to write it.
And that’s what I’m reflecting on now, what do we chose to share and what do we keep to ourselves?
What do I keep to myself? What do I blog about? What do I expose? What do I hide?
A few years ago I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue. My family and coworkers knew, they had to know because I wasn’t running at full capacity no matter how hard I tried… but I didn’t really share any of this online until I found out it was from an extreme Vitamin D deficiency, and I was on the road to recovery.
I can remember going to a conference once and meeting a blogger whom I read regularly and admired. I was so excited to meet this person who ended up just being an ordinary guy who really didn’t want to talk about anything I was interested in talking about. It was a huge let down. This is especially true because before meeting him, I’d connected with so many amazing people at conferences who felt like instant friends, and whom I loved meeting face to face. I had met so many people that I felt I knew, and who exceeded my expectations as wonderful human beings. This guy just let me down.
But did he? Did he let me down or did I expect too much? Had I built him up to be something he wasn’t? Did I imagine him to be more than he was? Did I imagine my online interactions meant more to him than I should have?
On the flip side, who have I let down, disappointed, and even unintentionally ignored? Who has met me and thought, ‘Oh, that’s not the guy I thought he would be… that’s not the online Dave that I know.’
Whether we want to admit it or not, we don’t put our whole selves online. We refine our online persona by intentionally editing things out. We may not see ourselves the same as the Instagram teen deleting images that don’t get enough likes, but in some way we are one and the same. We choose to put some things ‘out there’ and we choose to leave some things out.
I have a friend who shares the most incredible photos of themselves having a wonderful time on Facebook, who I know is unhappy and struggles with depression.
I have another friend who in the past over-shared a tremendous amount of information about themselves. I was concerned and mentioned this to them. The response: “I’ve had people thank me for being so honest, and sharing things they are afraid to.” They were over-sharing in my eyes, not in theirs. It was beyond my comfort zone, not theirs. It was an uncomfortable level of sharing for me, not for them.
I can see that we are not our online personas. They are different than us. Even though this persona can say a lot about us… they don’t always say what we think they say.
How intentionally different to you is your online persona?
This is such an interesting topic David. In some ways who we are online is somewhat ‘templated‘, however no matter the mask we may wear I feel that we still seep through the cracks somewhere, maybe even smiling with our eyes. This is something took from Alec Couros who suggested that instead of seeing our online presence as somehow being separate, we need to address it as being one aspect of who we are.
I remember thinking early on that there could be a divide between our identity and our ideas. However, I often think back to your comment which challenged me:
However, it is also important to remember, as Chris Wejr captures, is that not everyone is able to be who they are online.
I sometimes wonder if the issue is not who we are ‘online’, but who we are offline? I really like Austin Kleon’s point about keeping a diary as a private space.
Although I could always do more about communicating who I am online, I do not think I spend near enough time stopping and considering my offline space.