The masks of inscrutability, or are you really you?

[THE Ka]

That's what smilies are for, silly.

Sorry phantom, they can only portray a single emotion at one time, when let's say you are feeling one or two at the same time. Which is fairly common. If there was a limbic system for the internet for smilies I think you would be right, but alas that has yet to happen. Also, you might have to take into consideration of facial expressions. The brain does not carry around a dictionary of facial expressions from birth, it has to be imprinted upon the mind over and over for the brain to recognize that this: is sad, and that this: is happy. Facial expressions cannot be expressed as like in what we consider the physical world, through 'emotiocons' on the internet. Simply put, not everyone smiles with the same creases in the face, it is how you imagine the person behind the words and their emotions that really tells you what you would like them to say...

Sorry if that was confusing, I was trying to explain this information in a quantum physical sort of way.

If you are interested in how thoughts effect us and emotions, follow this link:
Dr. Masaru Emoto

~ Ka

[the phantom]

they can only portray a single emotion at one time

Then use multiple smilies, silly.

Also, you might have to take into consideration of facial expressions

Oh, yes, I definitely agree that facial expressions are vastly superior to smilies. I absolutely hate talking on the phone because I can't stand hearing someone's voice but not being able to see their face. But at least in writing, you don't get the voice either, so the lack of facial expression doesn't bug me so much. I just focus on the words, and the more words I've read from a specific individual the better idea I have of what their facial expression is when they post certain things.

[Guinevere]

I agree very much with Aiwendil in post #98, but as H.I. said, this may perhaps not be true for everyone.

For me "a mask" means a conscious disguise to hide one's real personality and to pretend to be someone else. My internet personality is certainly not a "mask" in this sense! It is rather a part of me that doesn't show so often in daily life. In real life I often feel , well, not behind a mask, but rather like in a cage, not being able to talk about things that really matter to me, because either I am with people with whom I can only talk about trivial things, or if people are clever and eloquent, I am just too slow and shy to express my ideas.
What I find so wonderful in such an internet forum is how we can share thoughts with other people across half the world, regardless of superficialities , just mind to mind.
Of course it's not like getting to know people in real life, it's only a part of them, but a very important part . I've read so many posts here that express much of the writer's personality and world view, I feel I know them better than my neighbours with whom I share only smalltalk.

[Kath]

But why adopt a nickname at all, than? If you is you and Aiwendil too, why not choose your own name as a nick?

In my case H-I I did not adopt a nickname. When I first found this site I only read the posts rather than looking at the names of the posters and I had so many monikers going that I needed something I could definitely remember, so choosing a shortening of my own name seemed the obvious choice.

This would then suggest that even in my original incarnation as "a pile of bones" I was myself and only myself as I had no alter ego.

But Aiwendil is I; I am Aiwendil

So this should, in theory, work for me. However, I have noted recently after reading this thread that I am a slightly different person online than I am in real life and I wonder if this is due to a subconscious fear that being myself will cause offense to others. This is in fact likely as my usual greeting to people takes the form of an insult and those who did not know me would probably wonder why I was greeting them so nastily.

This led me to thinking that yes the internet does allow us to create a 'mask', we can put out a form of ourselves that we think is acceptable to others and so stops them from seeing 'the real me'.

However at the same time it does allow an insight into a person that everday conversation does not give. On a site such as this you can watch a person grow over time. For example like myself. I began in the quiz thread saying very little and feeling terrified that I would say or do something to offend others - and in that respect I am different to my real life counterpart who speaks a long time before she thinks! Now I tend still not to talk much but I have migrated to the book and film discussion threads and in my mind that is indication of growth both in confidence and in myself as a person.

Screennames are not so much something to hide behind as they are a creation that allows us to develop and become them. Once this has happened I believe that the screenname and the real person are conjoined and compliment each other, making a better person out of them.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

I am Feanor of the Peredhil. But Fea isn't me. Just like Grace isn't me, Red isn't me, Jack isn't me... you get the idea. Just like you all have said, Feanor is an extension of myself, but it does not go directly back and forth.

Here is my thought: I love the internet. I honestly believe that some people on this website know me better than some of the classmates I have spent 12 years of school with. They have preconceived notions and see the same person they saw eight years ago. Y'all didn't know me eight years ago, or even four years ago, and so the only things you see are pieces of who I am NOW. You take my words at face value, not spending an overt amount of time trying to figure out my ulterior motives, or wondering why I'm talking to you because "God, she thinks she's so perfect. What does she want?" (I assure you, I never said I think I'm perfect until years after they refused to believe my modesty. Then I began saying "Yeah, you're right. I am better than you. Don't forget it.")

What I am trying (and perhaps failing) to say is that in RL, people give us masks, and online, we give them to ourselves. It is my belief that any mask we choose for ourself is a much more honest portrayal of who I see when I look in the mirror than any mask somebody else has given me. Mind you, I can tell I've been spending too much time on this site when the voices in my head start saying Fea instead of Laura. It's the most entertaining thing when a random set of words that I found a few years ago become such an important part of who I am.

Fea

[Aiwendil]

HerenIstarion wrote:

On the whole, my prolix discourse (and impersonating) was caused by the word ‘osanwe’ in your post previous but one.

"Osanwe" was certainly an exaggeration. There is of course a huge difference between osanwe in Tolkien's world and conversation via the internet. I did not mean to suggest that what happens here is anything like a direct experience of one another's mind. It is, as you have pointed out, not pure; it is only language. What I did mean was that, as with osanwe, the internet allows its users to interact with each other's minds and their minds alone. Like osanwe, it dispenses with the merely physical and it operates without respect to distance.

A. Information (for me) is: concept plus emotion the bearer of the concept attaches to it

B. Information (for you, as far as I’m allowed to guess) is: concept minus emotion the bearer of the concept attaches to it. (Or minus the bearer?)

Hmm, I'm not sure what exactly to make of this. To me, information is information. An emotion is information. A concept is information. Actually, I could throw us into quite off-topic realms and go on about everything being information, but I won't.

Quite a separate matter is the question of which information is important. I would say that sometimes information concerning a particular person's occurrent emotional state is important. Such information can generally be verbalized, albeit (of course) not with perfect accuracy.

I would say that, for the most part, emotions are far from the most important concepts. But then I did warn you about my being a bit of a Vulcan (though, alas, without the pointed ears).

And all this has an impact on what the thing I call “me” inside the body has to say here and now. I have a headache right now – how can I be sure that had I had it not, the words I chose now to embody my thoughts, or the thoughts themselves would have been the same?

Indeed - they surely would not have been the same, since you wouldn't have written that you have a headache (unless you decided to lie about it). But I really don't think that's relevant.

So Aiwendil is. So HerenIstarion is. But why adopt a nickname at all, than? If you is you and Aiwendil too, why not choose your own name as a nick?

Yes, I take your point that the names with which we choose to identify ourselves give others some information about us; and I agree. This hardly strikes me as "masking" anyone - on the contrary, by offering information about the user, it takes a step toward "unmasking". It seems to me that a self-chosen name is less a mask than one's given name, for the self-chosen name is more likely to correspond well with one's inner state. I am "Steven Linden" - the name says something about my sex and perhaps a little bit about my nationality, but as I see it neither of these things have much to do with what I would say is fundamentally me. When I try to identify as particularly as possible what "I" am, the answer I get is that I am my mind; I am the total of my thoughts and perceptions. The name "Steven Linden" tells you little about that "I" - I suppose it tells you what I believe my name to be, but not much else. "Aiwendil" tells you, as you surmised in your previous post, several things about me. Each is of course only a name in the end, but my point is that if anything the self-chosen one is less of a mask than the other.

So, you are Aiwendil, but Aiwendil is not you – you are more than Aiwendil. You are Aiwendil + your ‘real’ name + something more (which I usually tend to call ‘will’). But for people you interact with online – you are Aiwendil, which is less (or other) than what you see as yourself)

I see what you mean. I think we differ in whether we would call this a "mask". You leave certain things out of your equation. You are HerenIstarion plus George Lashki plus a number of other things - including, but not limited to, a voice, a body, an age, and other physical attributes. If you ask me, it would be more apt to describe these things as a mask. The HerenIstarion that we see does not encompass all aspects of your mind, but it also does not encompass anything which is not of your mind. Every word, every idea, every aspect of HerenIstarion that we on the forum encounter has its origin in your mind and your mind alone. In contrast, those who know you in real life experience aspects of you whose sole origin is not your mind. It is in this sense that I see the internet as "unmasking".

[Formendacil]

Mask or makeup?

Both hide your real features, but one obscures it completely, the other highlights specifc parts.

Which is your Internet identity?

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

As I was painting today, I happened to glance over at my companion's masks. Drama masks. Elaborate creations made to completely block your identity. Then I looked into the Art Room (we were in the hall) and saw little kids making masks. They were opaque, but you could still see the obscured features, and you could tell who they were. Are those the masks we wear? Or do we go to great lengths cultivating certain images that we want imbedded in the minds of others...

Then I went out to eat. I chatted with a friend I met up with there. She wears all kinds of makeup, including foundation, eye shadow, blush, lip gloss, mascara, eyeliner, and God only knows what else. We asked her one time how long it takes her to do her hair and makeup... Much longer than I would care to spend. I went into the bathroom and glanced in the mirror, taking in my pretty much invisible gold eye shadow and my mascara. My hair is short and choppy, so it was doing its own thing. Her makeup shows who she is, but rather than simply accentuating the positive, she makes it a point to completely hide the negative. If that girl had a zit, you would never guess.

What I'm saying is, there are different ways to wear your makeup, and there are loads of different masks. On this website, I wear a pair of horm-rimmed specs over lightly powdered eyes with long blacker-than-black lashes. And some chapstick. However, at first, I had a pair of sheer pantihose pulled over my face, obscuring my features and hiding everything of import. When I realized that I didn't have to put on a show to be accepted in this community, I reverted to myself. With an occasionally intellectual aire.

Fea

[Tigerlily Gamgee]

Perhaps what the internet does, rather than take away or add a mask, is take away a stereotype. So many times in real life we judge people before we even hear them speak based on their age, race, religion, hair color, etc. Here, since we can't see one another, there is no way that we can label each other as geek, jock, freak, etc. Instead, we hear one another speak first, and our opinions are based on our words rather than our looks. In that case, is the internet, in fact, removing the mask of preconception?
Our names can give the person an idea of who or what we may be, but not in the same way that our whole physical being can. Our names are one dimensional, usually, but our words are multi-dimensional. It seems that our internet names are chosen more so to protect ourselves because of those who can lie online and pretend to be things that they are not. By hiding behind a screenname we are able to fully be ourselves without actually revealing who we really are.
My internet name is just another name to me now, because it carried into real life. There are just as many people who call me on the phone and ask for "Tig" as there are those who ask for me by my real name. Weird, no? I actually kind of like it, because it reminds me that I am still real here, as I am everywhere. The name is just a name, but I am still me.