Identity

I really had no idea about MUD's before I read this article. I knew that one of my co-workers was constantly staying up late playing a virtual game, but I didn't realize what exactly that entailed - that there were interactive characters with personalities involved.

My only experience with the virtual world is when I had to play Sims for this Urban Planning class I was taking during undergraduate at Columbia. We had to build cities throughout the semester, using different techniques and report on what worked and didn't work. I could never get into it though because I just felt like it wasn't real - I didn't care if my city was successful or if it failed. I think that this is one of the more important points about logging into the virtual world - that the world and the characters in it became what you make if it. Just as "Aspects of the Self" quotes, "you are what you pretend to be."

I think the part that I disagree with the most is the notion of the various identities in the article about "Identity in the Age of the Internet." The author claims that "Identity, after all, refers to the sameness between two qualities, in this case between a person and his or her persona. But in MUDs, one can be many."

I guess I've just started to wonder where the line is between one's online personalities and one's real life (or RL, I've now learned) personality. Maybe there are many different types of personalities, such as the virtual one and the multiple self on page 17, but when do these personalities eventually become a part of you? Do these personalities only exist online - but what if you spent the majority of your time online? Does that mean that technically you have embodied these characteristics, and that your online personality has now become your RL personality?

Also, how can you distinguish between you, as the personality, and you, as the creator. Just because you create a character who exhibits certain behaviors does not mean that you are that character. Which also disagrees with my first notion that you are who you pretend to be :). So are we just characters or do these different personalities actually exist?

Personally, I think that everyone is different. Some people go online and can separate themselves from the virtual world, like myself, and some people choose to embody the personoa of certain characters and actually believe that they have these characteristics as well. And maybe they actually do...

As a side bar, I think that blogging is funny because I feel like I just type with such a stream of consciousness and it almost feels random to me. As an English major, I would never turn in a paper with these rambling statements, but somehow in a blog, it seems ok.