I said something stupid in class! 

It was followed by many unexpressed after-thoughts. They were bubbling in my head. I thought I could just curl up in my seat and cease to exist. I thought wrong; there was no way to run.

I will not assume that we’ve all been there, but at least I can assume that we all know how awfully misunderstood a badly articulated statement can be, and usually once said, the damage is hard to patch up, no matter how much one tries to explain and delve into what-I-meant-is-this-not-that marathon. Badly articulated thoughts are not to be taken lightly. They may cost a person their job, court-case, argument with a spouse, a speed ticket, and if one is so terribly inarticulate it may cost them much more.

If you may come with me back in time; back to the stone-age of our world wide web; our whole wide world, during the days when mIRC was hot stuff. I would sign in with one nickname, engage in some chitchat, but if I ever say something stupid, I knew I could always start all over again. It’s a simple procedure: sign out, register with a new nick and sign back in with a tabula rasa [1]. It’s fantastic (in the literal sense)!  Who said it’s fair for words to cost someone their job? That defeats the purpose of language as a facilitator, and allows the scientology church to charge a fee of over $200 to teach us how to speak and get over our deep unrest. We don’t need all that when we can just start all over every time we say something stupid. Even better, with trial and error we grow wiser.

Is that disingenuous? Is it even relevant to ask?

Our friend David Wong keeps a wonderfully comic blog that he likes to name, pointlesswasteoftime.com. He claims there are 2 million residents [2] in our new virtual world (Sims, Warcraft, Second-life and much more). Forget about choosing your own body and face and having a whole wardrobe of sexy attire, this is a haven for those who suffer the unbearable burdens of unexpressed after-thoughts.

But I digress. 

The phenomena of second life [3] is not what I am here for, I want to take us back to our simple virtual nicknames, our less hi-tech masks made of colored cardboard, so to speak. For instance, in the case of mIRC, one suddenly owns the privilege of accessing a whole room full of all sorts of people, with multiple conversations where no one over-voices the other. Why not push one’s boundaries, get over some personality fits and the baggage of a society that never fails to burden us with its unpleasant demands. Perhaps take notes on people’s reactions to things you wouldn’t say in a “real” occasion. Yet, the euphoria of re-creating ourselves or the world is short-lived. When the experimentation and infatuation are over, we fall out of love and get back to what we like to call reality – luckily without irreparable damage to our brain or eyesight.

However, falling out of love isn’t enough to make us give up a newly acquired habit from our old lover, namely, virtual nicknames. We still strongly cling to them.  In serious blogs and forums we never sign our name, we never expose ourselves… we’re never held accountable.

Here, I feel responsible towards myself not to inhumanely subject it to another distressing after-thought. I must clearly state my stance of not having a stance on this topic. I am just sharing a thought; I am not here to judge. We left it to Descartes four centuries ago and he pulled a statement out of thin air saying that existing is better than not existing. A statement like this will be highly frowned upon in a time where some academaniacs [4] are mumbling about some post-postmodern age. I will abstain from attempting to fill Descartes’ shrinking shoes and I will not claim that real is better than virtual.

Since my babbling should come to closure before I get comfortable with my topic… I guess what I am trying to say is: are they internal or external forces that push us into masking, are we fooled to think that this virtual world is a new, odd and alien trend or have we always lived behind masks that develop with our developing technology? Do we even wonder when we pick a nickname as to why we’re doing it?

Is it us or is it what’s around us that makes us in constant desire to hide even when we’re sharing an insightful comment or debating a serious topic? Are we hiding or are we just trying to distinguish between who we are and what we think?

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[1] Latin for blank slate, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
[2] http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/games/wowworld.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life#Residents
[4] Maniac academics

Comments (2)

2  Written by Yumna, on 06-06-2007 19:00 The writing style of this article is truly refreshing, engaging and witty!     Nurture it     As for the content, imagine everytime we spoke someone was recording us and that recording was made available to everyone. We probably wouldn't say much if that was the case, and if we did, we would put a lot of thought into what we want to say.     The 'beauty' of virtual communication is you can simply change your name and even if its traced back to you.. who can prove it?     Another aspect is, we grow, our opinions change, our rhetoric changes, our personalities change... and if we use our real identities to reveal our past and evolving selves then we aren't painting a true picture of our current self, or are we?

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