Comments on: Our Fluid Selves, Online and Off

By: Lukas

Lukas — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 21:58:33 +0000

I agree online and offline are real

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 15:47:12 +0000

My point was rather about how we should judge other people’s online vs. offline selves, not so much saying “go ahead and open up your whole life online.” We live in the real world, where people do judge others from their online activities, where people do commit the “fundamental attribution error” of thinking that dispositional factors are more important than situational.

Calling for people to be less judgmental about others is different than saying what each of us should do given that people are, in fact, very judgmental about online activities that they don’t necessarily understand.

So I agree with your point–but it’s not opposed to what I said in this post.

By: Nihilister

Nihilister — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 05:24:08 +0000

While I’d agree that online behaviors are simply extensions of “real” self, and that we should strive to become less judgemental about the virutal slices of someone’s Internet history that we may see. But there are many cases where one simply does not want to be a completely open book to the entire Internet, now and forever. This may be true regardless of whether or not a person is a public figure.

It might be different if everyone you encountered and everyone who may someday have influence over you was open-minded and non-judgemental, but for some very practical reasons, you may want to portray different aspects of yourself as separate online identities and preserve your “real” identity in a way that allows maximum personal (and professional) freedom.

By: John Koetsier

John Koetsier — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 22:53:46 +0000

I agree with a lot of what you’re saying …

IMHO, there is no “virtual” versus “real” world. That’s a false dichotomy that to me, stems from a lingering Tron-like sensibility that “inside the computer” there’s some funky electric world analogous to the “real world.”

Everything you do, whether you do it online or offline, is “real.”