1-2, I Got a Crush on You

I’ve been pondering the differences between the personalities of bloggers online vs in the flesh ever since I actually met my first blogger. I tend to the notion that there is indeed a certain degree of performance involved with some bloggers who’ve chosen to project a certain persona to their readership that isn’t really their own. Not all bloggers, mind you, but probably a fair few.

Apart from that, I think the REAL interesting question is not so much does LGF represent the “real” Charles Johnson as it is do the comments those goons who infest his comment boxes represent the “real” them.

Charles Johnson does ban commenters and delete posts. But those bans seem to be firmly focussed on those who disagree with the “lizardoid” outlook.

By the way, you probably don’t want to show up on the LGF referrer logs with ths post.

We are looking forward to having Jacob Levy/John Holbo and Adam Kotsko weigh in on this issue, which has gone too long unaddressed on the net. Unfogged wants to know!

This is a chilling post. I’m pretty sure I don’t project a ‘lizardoid’ personality on my weblog, or one that will inspire blogcrushes, but I don’t know what persona I do project…

Now I’m gonna be all self-conscious and stuff.

My wife tells me that when she met me, she was surprised to discover that my personal voice was almost exactly the same one I used on Usenet. But to me, my Internet writing is more mannered and impersonal than the things I say in person. But I think that others work differently.

I imagine PZ Myers as having the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes.

I had a blogcrush on you , Belle, about a month ago.

In any case, I do believe we’re seeing the real Giblets.

Well, any time you’re reading somebody, you’re filling in gaps, and somebody who knew you back in the day has a store of stuff to stick in those gaps that’s more verisimilar than just any old reader who’s just rolled in from a linkfarm. The latter’s bound to get some entertainingly incorrect ideas.

I’m interested in the ways that works to advantage: the cliques that end up forming online of folks you’d never expect to have gotten together in “real” life, precisely because they didn’t have silly, crufty verisimilar stuff with which to fill in those gaps. Blog crushes (or message-board post crushes, or Usenet crushes) help you get past the silly prejudicial stuff that would otherwise get in the way. (I gesture vaguely towards, say, the Pants Press cartoonists, as an example of message board crushes leading to an oddball but potent and attention-grabbing school of webcartoonists.)

But I’m going to start sounding like the late ’90s, I go on like this. I should just admit I’ve got a crush on John & Belle at the moment, but who doesn’t? (More cake!)

Interesting subject – one I’ve been thinking about for several years.

“Or are people perhaps more exhibitionist in print than they would be otherwise?”

Sure, often, but then the question becomes, is ‘otherwise’ any more real than ‘in print’? Maybe it’s the otherwise that’s the false self and the print one that is more real. In the land of ‘otherwise’ there is all that physical appearance stuff, all those mannerisms and bodies to deal with, all that presentation of self. In print – it’s just language. For some people, language is more central to what they are than presentation of (real world, embodied) self is.

It’s hard read a lot of someone’s writing without getting to know them. This is especially true in the blogosphere because you get to watch the writer’s daily interactions with other bloggers and the larger world.

People may selectively report details of their personal lives, but they give themselves away in other ways. For me, the two most revealing are conflict management and humor. People who seem respectful, secure, and funny online tend embody those virtues in real life.

Some blogs are written “in character” like Wonkette, or, to use an extreme example, Fafblog. I’ve never met Anne Marie Cox and I don’t even know who writes Fafblog, but I suspect that if I these characters capture some very salient aspects of the authors’ personalities.

Bob McManus you are absolutely right. Giblets doesnt hold nothin back lemme tell you.

I try to put as much Faf as I can in Fafblog but as some longtime readers an my friends will tell you I have kept quiet about my personal religious beliefs on account of I do not believe the world is quite ready yet an we do not have enough oranges yet.

Lindsay I do not know what you mean about written in character cept that folks are always comin up to me an goin “of Fafnir you are such a character” which I think is diffrent.

I am pretty much the same in person as on the net, but the average person I run into (e.g., my ex-wife at a recent family-obligation-event) does not want to deal with the real me. And never really did, in her case.

To the extent that I maintain a prudent message discipline in everyday life, my flesh and blood self is somewhat different than the annoying Zizka persona.

So Zizka is the person I really am or would like to be, but am not allowed to be. In another sense, however, I have screwed up my life considerably by not suppressing the Zizka persona in day to day life.

This is all just the dreams of the pwoerless, of course. The real Zizka is the editor of the New York Times. He is talking to William Safire this very minute, as a hefty security guard stands by, explaining to William that he should probably get a lawyer and has ten minutes to leave the building forever, and that Bubba is there to help him out.

I have historically been known to have a blogcrush on Belle, but it’s not nearly as serious as the blogcrush someone I know has on her. (He’s too shy to talk to her, though. That kind of thing.)

Aside from that tidbit, though, this is an example of my blog persona not giving the full information that you might be able to pry from me in personal conversation — although in essence, Adam Kotsko is the same yesterday, today, and forever, whether he appears in the flesh or via the Interweb. This is especially true given the fact that I am often too lazy to get upset about news stories or editorials, so I just fall back on my personal life.

Hey, I took a blogcrush and ran with it, all the way to Amsterdam. At this point, I can’t remember what came first, the blog or the crush. Whatever, the blog was integral to the whole process.

(…already I have blogcrushes on the side though… *throws sherbet-filled flying saucers at Fafnir*. Does that make me a bad person?)

Gee, that was a gross joke, wasn’t it. Did it come from David or Barista?

Seriously, I don’t think that online interaction with someone else, particularly someone I care about, is like the stuff we do in the real world. In that sense the real inner lovable me is not available online. You can’t massage bodies, only egos.

I reckon my online self is another persona, intersecting closely with my meatware self and profoundly compatible with it, but nonetheless a self that just lives in another domain.

When I started blogging I grew another me. In the real world, it most closely resembles the persona I use in the classroom – a mix of rants, jokes, examples, asides and encouragements. The me at dinner or in the pub is much quieter, and much slower. And yes I blog because I am motivated to by my real personality, where I am less confident and certainly short on freedom.