So lately a friend and I have been having this ongoing discussion of image, personality, imposed personality and their interplay. The great, or not so great thing about the Internet is the anonymity that it perpetuates. There is next to no accountability, and anyone can become just about whatever they damn well please. This, all to this pleasure and dismay to anyone who sits in front a screen and perpetuates the debacle.
The intriguing part of daily life is that you only have to try just slightly harder to achieve the same end, and do it right in front of someones face.
So, the discussion had been mostly centered around the fact that very few people really know the real you/me/him/her deep down. What I wear to work perpetuates the myth that I am a true white collar professional. Yet what I wear while practicing for the bike game or working/hanging at the bike game shop, perpetuates the ruse that I am a gamer. The everyday Joe/Jane will have the gilded impression on either side of the dime. At once I am the "man" and an hour later I am a slacker that should get a "real" job. The truth in this great debate lies somewhere in between. Then comes the twist that my friend and I speak about. This is one where you purposely inhabit a personality to go along with what believe perceive, or what you want to convey at that particular time. Sometimes as a joke, sometimes a joke taken to far. If anyone has seen the "podium shoes" you will know what I mean.
So what really is my/your persona? It probably is something, but a handful of people really know, and a busload think they do.
These days I can guarantee you that my real persona is masked well under the podium shoes, Jos. A Banks suits, VisitPA.com bike gaming kit, the tattoos, the house and this silly originallegend diatribe. The few that are "privileged", and or cursed, to really know my persona understand where I come from.
The part of this debate and dilemma is that I/you/we have all done something to inherit the persona non grata we at times try to escape, and we all will still do our damnedest to keep it alive.
Don't mind me. I am going to slip on my podium shoes & VPA.com kit and practice my victory salutes in front of a full length mirror, while sipping a $15 bottle of Delirium Tremens that I poured into my Jeff Gordon #24 pint glass. All this while Hank Williams Jr and Kid Rock blare in the background.
Like I said the truth lies somewhere in between.
Be nice.
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9 comments:
i think the answer lies somewhere in the fact that everyone isn't quite comfortable with themselves, even though they may say that they are. we all have contradictions, hypocrisy, darksides, etc. to our personalities, and we knowingly keep these things as hidden as possible. we may let a chosen few truely know who we are, but for the most part we do as you have written and put on the facade and let others make their own judgements on our personalities. our "fake" personas are just one more fun game to play during our short lives.
i'm confounded. I thought you were a gay dancer?
Intersting reading as always. Sometimes it's best for at least the moment that we can draw upon a selection of personas. You are right, on any given day, some just fit better than others.
who you are isn't something you make. it's something you face.
we should all be easier on each other.
i will say it is hard when you "know" a person yet the person they play on the internets isn't it.
it bugs me.
but then, maybe people that know me think i'm a big faker on the web too.
the problem lies in the caring about what the fucktards that judge you think. sadly, i still care--that sucks.
love you hebe! see you at mt snow??
So your brother led me to this site and I have to say I've learned more about you in 8 paragraphs than I have in 26 years. It's interesting to discover that you and Eric are such big Dead fans. That alone presents a huge conundrum. We all have to get older, and there's no way you can honor the "message" of the Dead and still fully assimilate into society. I'm at such a juncture in my life right now. Moved from Kansas to NYC three years ago, bartended for that period of time, and explored life, so-to-speak. Now I find myself feeling left behind, not pursuing the film degree I earned and the path that I dreamt. Time to join the real world. I got a job as an in-house producer for a director by the name of Douglas Keeve. I get to do some creative things, and I'm still working in the film industry, but those are just facts that ease my Kerouac, Dylan, Palahniuk, Garcia driven mind.
To try and pull my therapeutic musings into a cohesive response to your blog posting Mike, I would say that you’re never truly yourself. You’re never really the person you think you are because the person you picture yourself to be is simply an idealized version of yourself. I like to think of myself as a loner, but everybody sees me as the conversationalist game show host. Well if I’m constantly talking and trying to ease tensions in any social situation, and never really sitting alone by myself pondering life, then I am a fucking chatterbox cheese dick game show host. I suppose it’s a simple actions speak louder than words thing. We’re adaptive creatures, and if your job necessitates you fulfilling the white collar stereotypical role then you will. Eventually part of you becomes that guy. You’ll always have that “other” version of yourself that you think you are, but as we get older it will simply stay in our head more and more.
very nice.
I'd say we are all little pieces of that the other things we are. When I worked at the brokerage firm, I had to wear different hats than when I was riding or running with my friends. Although the job itself was some what morally incongruent for me, there were parts of what I did that were very much me. In the end I left that job, because I wasn't willing to do something that didn't sit well with me at the end of the day, I wasn't willing to give up who I was, and I felt like I was being pushed that way. Sure I had little rebellions, wearing earrings to work, blonde hair, clogs... but the pressure was there to conform fully, and what we delivered as a product wasn't worth that sacrifice for me, neither was the compensation, sometimes I wonder what if the compensation was?
much like fatmarc, often I am seen as a jester, but that's not really who I am, it's a part of me, and an outlet for me, but it's not all happy go lucky all the time, I have a darkerside, I have a very angry side, a driven side.
Much like the hat I had to wear at the brokerage firm, it's a part of who I am, but not the whole picture. It's all a piece of who we are. The first time one of my teammates saw my darkside he was like, "wow you have a darkside, who knew..."
at the end of the day, it think all of the differnt roles really are a peice of the core of our existence. Either that our we are all just gay dancers..
thanks for the thougts hebe...
"I yam what I yam"
Best wishes,
Popeye
All very good points. Now try throwing in speaking another language fluently and the pros and cons of feeling like just as much a part of that culture as the one you grew up with. It's like I've quoted before, "I'm a million different people from one day to the next."
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