fahye | question

I don't. Online me is remarkably similar to real me, what with us being the same person and all.

I admit that often people who know me online know me a bit better, because I find it easier to express myself through writing rather than words. But this isn't intentional - it's just how I am.

I'm uncomfortable discussing my feelings out loud unless I absolutely have to, and even then I'd rather have some notes I'd written previously to look at. Online I feel more free to express myself however I want. (Plus with the brainfog that comes with CFS, online gives me a better chance to make sure I'm saying what I think I'm saying, rather than saying something and a few minutes later realize that that's not what I meant at all).

Plus, online I can be more myself because there is less energy restraints. I can type *bounces* much easier than I can actually act excited in real life, again because of CFS. And for other reasons - I can type, "HAHAHAHA" much easier than I can give a hearty laugh in real life, because in real life I'm always conscious of how female my voice is, and that makes me uncomfortable to let it all out.

Having said that, anyone who knows me can find my blog and I won't care, as long as they're not my family. But my family don't know a LOT about me that the rest of the "real" word does, so I guess that's not surprising.

I don't. I do tend to ease people into the me-ness of me a little at first-- I'm not as open about my sexuality or so forth unless I decide I can trust them, because that's the kind of thing you sometimes need to be cautious about, but it isn't something I'd lie about and I don't tone down my opinions. There are some things I'd say to friends who are in fandom (be they also friends in RL or not) that I wouldn't say to other people in RL, but that's not censoring so much as an in-joke thing. I mostly forgo references to fandom in RL just because they wouldn't really make sense to someone not IN fandom. Also, I can be very reluctant to tell people I write offline until I know them better, whereas it's one of the first things people know about me online. Often the first, because I make a lot of friends through my fic. *shrug* So I guess I do censor myself in RL as opposed to complete lack of censure online, but not to a massive extent.

I'm not as open about my sexuality or so forth unless I decide I can trust them, because that's the kind of thing you sometimes need to be cautious about,

You know, I always think that. But then I realize that if people can't handle my being pansexual, they're definitely not going to handle my being transgendered or kinky and whatnot.

Nonetheless, it's a sad world that we need think about being careful about something as stupid as orientation :/

(end nosy flyby comment)

Yeah, I know. D: In theory I'd be happy to be open about it and I don't want to be more than acquaintances with anyone who'd be a dick about it-- happily I have awesome uni friends who are all cool with it, I'd told them all by about the end of first year-- but, with law particularly, I have to keep in mind the uncomfortable reality that I may end up having to work with a lot of these people or in the same professional community as them, so I've got to be slightly more careful than I otherwise might. Also I just don't like unnecessary confrontation, so I'll start a fight with someone in a lecture about their stance on something, but I won't go out of my way to test it by telling people my sexuality with no prompting. It's none of their business anyway.

Hm. I have a long and thoughtful comment in me somewhere on this, I am sure. Just probably not at 2 AM when I am avoiding Hebrew homework.

Therefore, less long and thoughtful comment:
1) I tend to let my (harmless!) insanity have a freer reign online than I do in RL, or at least let it go in different directions (see above comment re: wacky fandom injokes), and it doesn't seem worth the time to try to explain to various curious onlookers. (Case in point: freshman year roommate, wonderful girl for whom I have much affection, but who found the whole online thing perplexing and confusing in the greatest degree and would not stop talking about it.)
2) Vague intimations of copyright infringement lawsuits/future fireability/waughness.
3) Main fact drummed into my head by parents from a young age: MAKE SURE NO ONE CAN TRACE YOU BACK SCARY ONLINE STALKERS AUGH. Paranoia persists!

Almost everyone I know knows I spend a fair bit of time online. And that I am a sci-fi fan and bit of a geek. Close friends know I'm a slasher (though they don't really think about it cause they have my early (and only) slash stories to laugh and laugh and laugh over...)

My closest RL friend is on my friends list. Apart from him I try to make sure no one in real life associates dubhartach with me. (early on I may have used it as my main AIM/MSN name, I don't now). I keep a seperate LJ for real life stories/holiday tales, photos etc that I want to share with friends and family. The RL friend is on the friends list of that, so he is as hidden as possible so no one can backtrack. (if you know me in RL and were to go looking for me on the internet and were to discover this LJ I reckon you'd be fairly sure it was me).

Why all the secrecy? Partly I don't like the thought that people may know something about me that I didn't want them too. Partly, while I can laugh about liking slash in general to RL friends I don't fancy explaining it to my parents. Nor do I want to get into a debate about teacher/student, chan, incest etc with RL people.

Workwise that last bit could be a bit of a disaster (I work in a hospital) so no anecdotes that might ID me and lots of effort not to leave a "trail" if I totallly can't help checking while at work.

My current "argh" about all this is I started my del.icio.us with my real name, use it for research tracking and of course it is googleable. So all my fannish stuff is not shared. Which I wish wasn't the case but not a lot I can do about it.

So, that't the long long version of me!

When I first started going online, I didn't bother hiding anything. I learnt pretty quickly after I naively let my phone number out to some guys I met on IRC. That was probably the start of things, and from then on I was very careful never to let anything that could identify me in RL onto the internet.

Anyway, I started getting into fandoms in high school. In RL I'm far more reserved and taciturn with people unless I feel comfortable with them; in online fandoms it was a chance to let loose, so that was probably the start of the definition between Leareth and well, me. Later on I started to acquire something of a reputation online as a fanfic writer, and it wasn't for a while until I realised just how much of a reputation that was in some circles. My habits in keeping anything that could identify me in RL off the internet turned out to be a good thing when I received rather uncomfortable attention from some readers, one of whom despite living overseas managed to hunt me down and cause endless headaches when she managed to invade the forums and chatrooms I used with university friends. During this whole time, but, I didn't bother hiding my blog or any specific entries because I knew my parents didn't even know I had one or how to find it.

Moved to LJ a few years ago because Pitas and Blogger were irritating and all the cool kids were on in. Discovered the advantage of being able to lock posts and took full advantage of it when writing about personal stuff, again, because I didn't like the idea of airing all my laundry out in public not when I knew I had god knows how many fandom readers interested in me. In fact, I didn't even dare post any pictures of my face online, that's how paranoid I was (and given some of my online stalker experience I think this is understandable). With regards to parents, I had figured out long ago that they considered my hobbies and interests 'odd' so again, Leareth was kept very, very separate from me.

Travelled overseas, met a whole bunch of people from LJ who turned out to be amazing. I also met some readers who could fall into the 'stalker' category -- one of them laughs it off and is now a good friend, but the rest ...well. Made me rather glad that I hadn't really exposed myself online. Though overall the experience was a good one, and given that this is about the time I got into cosplaying which meant heaps of photos I even got over my paranoia of putting pictures of myself online.

Final years of uni, lots of stress and angst, all of it which I considered personal and therefore locked. This is partly because I don't like to expose my weaknesses; the rest is because by now it was second-nature. Last year, though, I found out from my mother that not only had my parents discovered my journal, they had been reading it for over a year. I found that to be a huge invasion of privacy because my LJ is where I vent, and there was a lot of parent-related venting during those years. That's when my journal went completely friends-locked.

Anyway, nowadays I'm used to the friends-lock and whilst I think I've relaxed more, there's still a definite difference between 'Leareth' and me. Actually, I'm so used to my online handle I'll respond to it when called, and in fact it's the name everyone uses for me when I go to M'sia and N.America. In any case, even if my parents hadn't forced me to F-lock my LJ I probably would have done it anyway this year because I am working full time in a high profile organisation.

............and wow, that's pretty much the history of my entire online life in an LJ reply.

Wow. See, STALKER ACTIVITY is one of those things that I've never had to deal with, and it's interesting because when writing this I was thinking more of hiding-fandom-self-from-RL than the other way around.

You know me :) I respond instantly to 'Fahye' in RL and know some people who don't call me much else.

I do the hiding-fandom-self-from-RL for sure, because in the circles my family keeps and where I work writing slash isn't exactly something you'd bring up in conversation. Actually, I don't even like to tell people I write online unless I know the person I'm talking to is 'in' with the fandom thing.

But yes, stalker activity. Biiiiiiiiiig reason for paranoia, especially when you visit countries and events you know will be attended by said stalkers.

...good points in favour of Not Being Famous On The Internets.

*clings to smallness*

I don't care who knows I'm a dork who loves tv and spends a crap load of time on the internet. All my friends outside uni have LJs, so, yeah, they know. College is home of nerds, so no one cares, and they love me for being the supplier of new tv on the network. I would hazard a guess that my mum knows I'm on the internet doing crap related to fandom, though I don't think she gets quite what fandom IS, and I sure as hell don't plan on enlightening her (although the way things are going with her and her dory friends at work, I am expecting the "hey, what's fanfic?" question any day now.)

So no, I don't hide anything about all this. The only reason I wouldn't want my family finding my LJ is because it's full of crap about THEM and emo whining that I'd rather they didn't see. Also, hi, I'm a big dyke who likes girls. So, it's actually the reverse! I hide my real life ON the internet. Wow, I am weird.

FAHYE THIS IS TOTALLY IRRELEVANT TO YOUR POST BUT PILOTS ARE GUESTING AT DRAGON*CON THIS YEAR.

I KNOW.

And no I can't afford another $4000 trip and yes half of the fucking internet is going to be there and YES, I'M BITTER.

(Not that this is in any way your fault or anything, I'm not bitter at you, but kdkshajsa sometimes I hate everything.)

Because I like to control who knows what about me. My friends who like the same shows as me don't need to know about my job, and people in class don't need to know what books I read, and friends from when I was active in the music scene when I was nineteen certainly don't need to google my name and read my Narnia incest fanfiction. I'm just a person who likes to decide how much people know about me and I've always been pretty private. Anyone who knows me really well knows I'm a big geek, but if you know me really well, I probably don't care about you knowing about the other sides of me — and it's fairly easy for anyone who does know me that well to identify the real me from the internet me.

Also, assholes use the internet too, and what's fandom for if not to be a safe-from-daily-assholes place?

My LJ persona isn't different from my RL persona, at least not anymore. I used to write under the guise of Toblerone and I used to write articles rather than diary style entries. I kind of miss that now actually, my journal is so boring and standard now.

I try to make sure that all really personal stuff is friends only. I wouldn't want any students to read my blog. I'll probably make it friends only completely if I get a full time teaching job.

It's not that I try to keep personas separate or anything... I just try to keep my parents from finding out I have an LJ. Work stuff gets locked down, b/c most employers frown an awful lot at such things, but other than that, yeah. It's just mostly to keep my parents from finding out. Well, that and the fact that it's dumb to have Your Actual Real Information up where anybody can find it, so I lock any of that stuff down, as well, so that I know who's knowing where/who I am. And it's usually people I already know.

Less than I used to, more than others do, I think. Partly it's due to an overall cultural change in what's acceptable for public consumption online in general.

But I do try to limit the amount of personal identifying information that is available, although I know that right now a determined person could track me down through what's out there in ways I don't intend to enumerate here. Still, my online persona was linked pretty solidly with my offline one through me becoming a contact point for some fandom-based charity work a while ago. (However, it's been long enough that I think that may have faded again.)

Anything that could seriously affect me professionally doesn't get written about in an unlocked setting or gets altered to the point of general bland nonrecognition. I've "known" people who got fired or suffered reprimands due to lack of discretion in such cases.

I try to keep 'em the same as much as possible. I'm less forthcoming in RL, perhaps, but not when I meet internet people in RL. Then I'm pretty much exactly the same. :D

I make some minor efforts to keep real life people from finding my journal for professional reasons. Having my students, their parents, my colleagues, or my therapy clients find my journal is. . . no. I try to lock all entries with personal information, but if someone was really trying to stalk they could probably figure me out.

My brothers read my LJ. My parents know I have one, and could find it if they wanted, but know that I'd rather they didn't read it. (This is actually no longer really true; if they read it, I'd just lock or filter anything I didn't want them to see. I've made vague noises to that effect to my mom, who showed no particular inclination to listen.) I'd vaguely rather my aunts and uncles didn't know, but mostly I'd just want to know if any of them did stumble across it because I like to know who my audience is and whether I should filter certain things. It's not an issue of online life, as such, so much as that I like to be able to have privacy from family.

Beyond that, I friends-lock anything that's even vaguely about work at a level beyond "work was long today," and I try not to mention co-workers by name. This is mostly paranoia, since I don't work the kind of job where anyone would be watching me closely and have never had reason to gripe about the kinds of things I would worry about supervisors or co-workers seeing. It's partly to have that well ingrained as a habit in case I ever do get that kind of job, partly because I'd rather be safe than sorry, and partly because I don't know my co-workers' attitudes towards having their names on the internet. That last bit goes for friends, too -- if I don't know someone's policy on the RL/internet divide, I'm careful not to put up more than their first name sans much in the way of identifying details without checking first.

Beyond that, I'm pretty free with things. I'd lock down my fanfic if I were in the kind of job where I thought having copyright infringement up in public was a less than fantastic idea, but it hasn't been an issue yet. I think if I wrote more fanfic that I'd mind anyone seeing -- more adult-rated stuff, or disturbing beyond mild creepiness, or whatever -- or discussed more sensitive personal issues in my LJ or whatever, I'd lock them down more. But I don't, so I don't.

I have considered going friends-only, occasionally and briefly (and, I admit, in significant part because there are so many pretty friends-only banners around; this shows the level of serious consideration I've given it), and decided immediately against it. I don't mind most of what I write being public; anything I want more private, I'll filter, and I believe in making new friends. I want interesting people to be able to stumble across my journal.

I do halfheartedly try to keep my last name from getting spread too far, particularly since it's not all that common a name. Given that it's part of my primary email address, though, you can see how hard I work at that.

If you mean to what extent do I view my online and RL personas as separate... I don't, really, any more. I used to think that online I was much more cheerful and outgoing, more able to make friends and less likely to sit in a corner being introverted in a crowd. Over the course of my college years, and to a lesser extent after, I caught up to myself. I blame this partly on the increased confidence of having internet friends, and partly on the gradual development of confidence and social skills over the course of time, when I was in an environment (that is, not the town I mostly grew up in) where I had actual close friends. At any rate, I don't see Beth and Gen as separate, really. They're just two different names I use in different contexts.

...This was possibly excessively long-winded. Oh well.

I don't think I have an online persona...do I? I mean, I really don't view myself as imaginative enough to construct some sort of larger-than-life personality.

I will say that I don't use my last name for "security" purposes, but that hardly counts as a whole new "persona". Would I be upset if my family found this journal? Maybe, but only because I'm far more candid about them here than I am to their faces, and that's almost entirely political right there. Uh...meaning that I just don't see eye to eye politically with my family.

They are almost completely separate. I'm a secretive person. That's really waht it comes down to.

I am pretty much full-time crazy, although the subject matter of my jokes changes from online to off.

When I first started on LJ, SIX YEARS AGO HOMG WHAT? um. Yeah, I was a lot less cautious. I still didn't put my real name out there, because it is unique, but I was pretty easily trackable and I was pretty open.

And then I acquired a stalker, in part due to a internet-related job I had. This was not fun, had journal-deleting fallout, and still makes me paranoid in some odd ways. (for instance, I use emmy online instead of my real name, wilhelmina.) Also I moved, and the friends I made here came through my work, mostly, and were not geeky in the way we all are. Also my beloved family consists of two parents convinced the internet is still full of weirdos and siblings who do not do the online comm thing like I do, and SHALL NEVER KNOW about the RPing, etc.

So it basically became a thing where no one in RL shared my "geekier" interests and my family does not get them either and hence a separation kinda grew up, and it's one that I am more than okay with due to stalker issues and the fact that organized fandom of any sort isn't really my thing. I love m'ways, I love you guys, but I don't belong to any fan comms or write much fic or anything like that.

Personality-wise, though, I think it's pretty much the same deal online and off. Well, we've met. Is it?

I think I don't have an accurate idea of what people think about me, either online or off, so this is hard . . . there are some conscious things, though. I'll come back to this when I've eaten.

I have the same personality, although I am more likely to articulate moody reflection in an LJ post than conversation. I'm just... not terribly good at pretending away even little bits of my personality. Which can be a strength or a weakness at varying times.

Lately I've been trying to lock down more personal details, though. I don't want some idiot years from now surfing the web and exclaiming, "She's a closet fan of Remus/Hermione! She cannot be trusted to teach children!" Eventually I will probably have to go Friends Only, which makes me very sad. All because I cannot delete my pitas blog, which links to my LJ and is found through Googling my old SN.

I've always had an Internet pseudonym, because for me that's basic internet safety. I lock down anything really personal or anything work-related, but I wouldn't care if my mom read my blog. If I could just get her to make a journal...

Most of my real life friends I found on the Internet or are cool, so I don't hide nothing. I just filter prudently.

*wanders over from another post to comment here*

Hm. As my f-list has grown, I've become more and more careful about Who Gets To Hear What Information. When I first got an LJ, I had maybe twenty people on my f-list, most of whom were fandom-related friends and maybe only one or two of whom actually had met me in RL. Now that my f-list is around 200 or so, I do try to ensure that I don't write an open post of anything I wouldn't feel comfortable talking about out loud in a fairly public setting. LJ doesn't get the boring daily details of 'this is what I had for breakfast, this is what I'm doing this weekend, this is who is bugging me at work'. That's nothing to feel left out about -- only my parents and maybe my roommate get that sort of thing.

I'm fairly careful about keeping my name and identifying details out of general Internet space. Googling my real name doesn't really get you much of anything, apart from geneaology lists. I mostly hope that anyone who meets me in RL after knowing me on LJ wouldn't be completely shocked in a OMG-you're-nothing-like-I-thought-you-were sort of way.

Well, I compartmentalize like crazy anyway -- camp!me was different from school!me -- and I default to keeping real name and address relatively private for Internet Safety. The cannibal penis jokes, that's all me all the time.

I don't know. Anyone? Bueller? Gen tells me I am more manic on the internet than in person. I am so brainless right now.

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