[๐] merging my internet self into my real self
anonymity, our internet selves, hermit crabs.
as a kid, my parents used to get mad at me for using my nickname aco for my minecraft and roblox accounts. with my dad being in cybersecurity when he first came to canada, the thought of his first-born kid using a name so closely tied to his kid's real name was a major breach of security in his head. he didn't ever monitor what i was doing on the internet but would get mad seeing me use names that were not strictly anonymous.
i remember using teamspeak and skype back in 2012 and always being scared to share my real name with others, even though i was sharing an email which had my real name. in general, using the internet in the late 2000s and early 2010s felt like i was always at risk of being the victim of some next level cybercrime. i was always scared that someone would be able to figure out where i live and come steal me... i lived in a building with two hundred units at the time. realistically who is going to come steal me, a fat 12-year-old kid with literally nothing in his name?
anyways, as i grew older, and ended up in periods of isolation. i gradually got okay with sharing information about my life with others id talk to, realizing that not everyone i met was some 40-year-old out to steal me (as per my mom's word). i had a few friends on discord that knew what i looked like, where i lived, all the things they tell us not to share with internet strangers. we bought gifts for each other at times and shared netflix accounts. id finish my shifts at the department store i used to work at, then hop onto a call with them after coming home till i went to sleep.
i've also met a few of them too, and gosh, it's so awkward when people who used to be literal packets of data coming into my laptop turn out to be actual living people. having this precedent in online communication that "hey, we will probably never meet each other" makes it so easy to talk to others digitally, but once you meet each other, it becomes a tad stressful. we know so many things about each other, but assigning my experiences of them to a physical form unnerves me greatly.
as much i now tell my sisters to be careful of people on the internet, i am a hypocrite. yes, i write this blog using a nickname, but i've also shared quite a bit about myself in this blog. i've shared pictures of myself, the area i live in, notes about my career, my schooling, a lot of what could be considered sensitive information. i am very much not anonymous and private, but i think that for me, it's not that serious. for all of you to understand my point of view on things, you need to understand who i am. you need to have some sense of where i'm coming from. it's a sacrifice i have a responsibility to make to ensure i stay as real as possible when writing all this.
internet anonymity is weird at times, that's the jist of it. in the past, i've treated the internet as a shell i could hide myself within. a sort of impenetrable layer of myself that i kept secret from the people in my life. it's almost freeing now, being able to merge these two long separated parts of myself into one. a majority of people i talk to online are people i actually know now, which itself brings a sense of responsibility to act like myself. i no longer have any rational behind acting deranged. a select few people in my personal life do have access to what i write too. at times it can be nerve wracking, people i'm close to seeing this more closed-off side to myself, however, i think i've enjoyed being able to show others this weird side of myself.
i look back at my internet journey as not being scary at all, and in general it has taught me that for me, all in all, privacy and anonymity is not as important to me. behind all the profile pictures, nicknames, mannerisms, i am still me.