Offline and Online identity.
What is identity? Identity is one of the most complex facets.
Identity incorporates subjectivity, which is the sense of self as produced through various cultural, political, legal, and linguistic formations.
Inner identity core in which identity is thought and felt to be essentialist, fixed, and innate. Core to identity, then, is the broad array of communication methods, channels, forms, texts, interpretations, audiences, and modes of reception.
Front-stage and backstage
Our Identity has different facets, a front-stage and backstage. The front-stage is the identity we project to those around us and is altered accordingly to how we want the other person to perceive us and the backstage is who we are when we are not in the presence of others.
Identity isn’t just offline or online: It’s both
Online identities can be an expansion of a person’s real identity or a completely different identity. the fact that we can present a better version of ourselves through intelligence, morality, wit and charm. The latter point is so simple and easy to do because offline signifiers such as gender, age, skin colour are not obvious online and therefore can be fabricated.
Factors that determine online personality depend upon offline personality (social restrictions), others that you interact with online and offline (strangers/friends and family), desires and expressive freedom.
Offline identity vs online identity
Your online identity is not the same as your real-world identity because the characteristics you represent online differ from the characteristics you represent in the physical world.
The online gateway to roleplay
The fake social media profile is an old joke, but lately, it’s evolving. Maintaining a fictional online identity has become a lifestyle, a social pursuit, an act of collaborative fiction. The role-playing universe has migrated from the fringes of the internet to that blandest of social networks, Facebook, where it ticks along in parallel to reality. And as role-playing edges closer to the mainstream, it raises questions about just how ‘real’ any of us are in our everyday online lives.
Role-playing
Social media thrives on self-delusion, encourages us to present only the positives in life. The issue is that we all lie online. Now, we find ourselves at a curious cultural moment: that of fantasy games going mainstream. Facebook has become host to countless role-playing communities, with one for every conceivable fandom.
