Identity and Communication Online

I found Howard Rheignold's Chapter 5 in his book The Virtual Community to be quite interesting. I had wondered for quite a while what those who immerse themselves in virtual worlds thought of their own identities. He wrote that "similar to the way previous media dissolved social boundarries related to time and space, the latest computer-mediated communications media seem to dissolve boundaries of identity as well". In other words, communication via the internet blurs the lines of identity.

Finally, I had found some concrete source that said what I had thought. I had, overtime recently, asked a few people who play online games (like MUDs) or worship social networking (I have several friends that I think are addicted to MySpace and Facebook) what they thought of interaction through the internet. How in-depth could a relationship with somebody, either near or far, get just using that medium? Wouldn't who the "real" person was get hidden by who they wanted others to percieve them as? Their answers always confused me, if not at first, then eventually.

"It's not really pretending because you do talk to other people", one would say.
"Yeah, but you're pretending to be a knight in some fantasy-land", I'd retort.
"You don't get it", was always inevitable.

But I tried to get it. I really did. I've never been the kind of girl who is comfortable being ignorant, even though I might never be that into whatever the subject at hand was. I wanted to know and even tried my hand at Second Life, but do I get it? Truly? No.

I can't help but to think that when interacting with unknown (in the real world, at least) others, how much true interaction is possible? Rheingold says that in MUDs people are "pretending to be somebody else, or even pretending to be several different people at the same time". Therefore, the true self becomes the fantasy self.

Frustrated more than ever, I asked a guy I know, who plays these kinds of games online, what he thought. He automatically began to defend what he enjoyed doing when I had asked about his feelings concerning the whole communication and identity issue. He said that he had even heard of people who had gotten married after they met online through games. I then had sarcastically noted that I wondered how long that would last. Then he said something I found rather interesting. He asked how much misrepresentation I thought went on in online dating services.

The man had made a good point. While I didn't think it as odd to meet another person on Match.com and have a relationship, I did in Second Life. I'd have to rethink it all. My head was begining to ache. Ugh! In the end, although I still agree with Rheingold, I decided to go with "to each their own".