Multiple Identity Crisis
Virtual identities and hypersigilism
When I create a new virtual identity it takes me awhile to feel them out. It's like putting on a suit of armor or picking up a new tool. It's almost like your muscle memory has to attune to the new instrument in a progressive manner until you cease to notice the armor on your skin. The virtual character's online voice sounds neutral to me, likely similar to my normal way of typing or speaking. But then over time the character develops into what it was meant to be. They grow a style or a tone that's not just me. Once I've worn in the character such that I'm secure that it can protect my ego and give me the feeling of pseudo-anonymity that I desire, then it takes on its own life. Sometimes the phenomena loops back and emerges from my spatial presence in subtle and unexpected ways. It seems roundabout, but its a functional, albeit weird, way for me to develop my consciousness with the help of virtual space.
Social and cultural identity
For whatever reason I strongly feel that I'm culturally/socially outside. My physical presence is tolerated in public space, but there's a whole codified system of social mores dedicated to preventing me from getting in too deep or to have too much of an understanding of who's whom and what's going on. Obviously things are like that for a reason - no one wants a loose cannon wandering into an already tense situation and screwing everything up. But the message I'm getting is that I'm a universal loose cannon that everyone instantaneously knows to avoid. I'm sure everyone feels like this at some point, but then eventually they find their people or whatever and become a self-actualized member of society that feels comfortable excluding the types of people they would have been friends with earlier in life. Maybe that'll happen to me one day and I'll look back at younger me and be like “ho ho ho, it wasn't that bad.” But yeah here and now it feels that bad. I sort of hate it.
It could just be my fate to be an mercurial outsider that never really fits into a group but can walk between groups with greater ease than other people. At this point of my life it seems very much that this is going to be a life-long trend, which means that career, relationships, community ties are off-limits to me, but I gain the benefit of having rare experiences or access to concealed knowledge. As lonely and unhappy as I feel at times, I should make more of an effort to realize that just because I'm outside looking in there aren't people inside looking outwards.
Good advice that I'd give to myself would be to not be ashamed of being in the margins. But I feel that even marginalized people have identity groups. I'm too weird to have an identity group to prove that I'm being neglected or excluded by normative society. In fact, trendy middle-class liberals are quick to write me off as conventionally hegemonic despite their riches and community roots. I feel that it's easy to be anti-establishment when the establishment provides a comfortable safety net for you to fall into once you're tired of rebelling against it. In my case my mere existence is rebellious since the people that make up the establishment sincerely don't want me to exist as a person, no matter how normcore I may try to be. On a genetic level I represent too many of their fears come to life.
So I exist in the “margins” of society, yet I am not officially marginalized, and I generally support existing identity groups that are struggling for visibility and human rights, but I may not be a part of actions of solidarity for fear that I'm some spy for oppressive mainstream society.
So I'm not sure how else to describe myself. Some people say I shouldn't try to label myself. But without a label I essentially don't exist. That might be the one thing everyone can agree on: that I don't exist or shouldn't exist.
Mr. Roboto
So people who know me know that I don't shut up about how the internet shaped my adolescence and young adulthood. As I got tired of my usual online haunts and tried to explore the “adult” world of society at large, I kept returning to online spaces to escape the damages I mentioned above. I'm deep enough into my life that if things were ever going to change, they would have done so already. Enough time has passed that if I was ever going to start dating again, or applying for permanent work, or accumulating money or stuff, then the ball would have started rolling by now. None of this late-bloomer stuff. If given the choice to be a criminal or a professional I would probably pick being a criminal just out of principal - its really the only way to make an honest living. I've got so many well-earned layers of jaded that I think I'm basically done as regular human. There's really nothing for me in this city or anywhere else, but online spaces are a rare opportunity to put on a new skin. Only by hiding yourself can you really reveal yourself, and that's far more cathartic than whatever it is I'm supposed to be spending money on. So years later and my young adult fears are more or less true: All the most consistently rewarding things in life are online and cheap, and my spatial existence is really just this weird vehicle that runs around collecting food and information while wrecking things for other people. My life is the video game and my virtual existence is where I can relax with discussion and companionship. Some would find it sad or pathological, but it's the only way and if my existence is any indication then there's going to be a whole generation of people living and dying like this with out any other recourse. People would be quick to blame me for being immature or non-cooperative or non-conforming, but those people don't understand what its like in the ... I can't even say “margins” or “shadows” because that's too lame. They don't understand what its like in spaces that don't exist.
When I create a new virtual identity it takes me awhile to feel them out. It's like putting on a suit of armor or picking up a new tool. It's almost like your muscle memory has to attune to the new instrument in a progressive manner until you cease to notice the armor on your skin. The virtual character's online voice sounds neutral to me, likely similar to my normal way of typing or speaking. But then over time the character develops into what it was meant to be. They grow a style or a tone that's not just me. Once I've worn in the character such that I'm secure that it can protect my ego and give me the feeling of pseudo-anonymity that I desire, then it takes on its own life. Sometimes the phenomena loops back and emerges from my spatial presence in subtle and unexpected ways. It seems roundabout, but its a functional, albeit weird, way for me to develop my consciousness with the help of virtual space.
Social and cultural identity
For whatever reason I strongly feel that I'm culturally/socially outside. My physical presence is tolerated in public space, but there's a whole codified system of social mores dedicated to preventing me from getting in too deep or to have too much of an understanding of who's whom and what's going on. Obviously things are like that for a reason - no one wants a loose cannon wandering into an already tense situation and screwing everything up. But the message I'm getting is that I'm a universal loose cannon that everyone instantaneously knows to avoid. I'm sure everyone feels like this at some point, but then eventually they find their people or whatever and become a self-actualized member of society that feels comfortable excluding the types of people they would have been friends with earlier in life. Maybe that'll happen to me one day and I'll look back at younger me and be like “ho ho ho, it wasn't that bad.” But yeah here and now it feels that bad. I sort of hate it.
It could just be my fate to be an mercurial outsider that never really fits into a group but can walk between groups with greater ease than other people. At this point of my life it seems very much that this is going to be a life-long trend, which means that career, relationships, community ties are off-limits to me, but I gain the benefit of having rare experiences or access to concealed knowledge. As lonely and unhappy as I feel at times, I should make more of an effort to realize that just because I'm outside looking in there aren't people inside looking outwards.
Good advice that I'd give to myself would be to not be ashamed of being in the margins. But I feel that even marginalized people have identity groups. I'm too weird to have an identity group to prove that I'm being neglected or excluded by normative society. In fact, trendy middle-class liberals are quick to write me off as conventionally hegemonic despite their riches and community roots. I feel that it's easy to be anti-establishment when the establishment provides a comfortable safety net for you to fall into once you're tired of rebelling against it. In my case my mere existence is rebellious since the people that make up the establishment sincerely don't want me to exist as a person, no matter how normcore I may try to be. On a genetic level I represent too many of their fears come to life.
So I exist in the “margins” of society, yet I am not officially marginalized, and I generally support existing identity groups that are struggling for visibility and human rights, but I may not be a part of actions of solidarity for fear that I'm some spy for oppressive mainstream society.
So I'm not sure how else to describe myself. Some people say I shouldn't try to label myself. But without a label I essentially don't exist. That might be the one thing everyone can agree on: that I don't exist or shouldn't exist.
Mr. Roboto
So people who know me know that I don't shut up about how the internet shaped my adolescence and young adulthood. As I got tired of my usual online haunts and tried to explore the “adult” world of society at large, I kept returning to online spaces to escape the damages I mentioned above. I'm deep enough into my life that if things were ever going to change, they would have done so already. Enough time has passed that if I was ever going to start dating again, or applying for permanent work, or accumulating money or stuff, then the ball would have started rolling by now. None of this late-bloomer stuff. If given the choice to be a criminal or a professional I would probably pick being a criminal just out of principal - its really the only way to make an honest living. I've got so many well-earned layers of jaded that I think I'm basically done as regular human. There's really nothing for me in this city or anywhere else, but online spaces are a rare opportunity to put on a new skin. Only by hiding yourself can you really reveal yourself, and that's far more cathartic than whatever it is I'm supposed to be spending money on. So years later and my young adult fears are more or less true: All the most consistently rewarding things in life are online and cheap, and my spatial existence is really just this weird vehicle that runs around collecting food and information while wrecking things for other people. My life is the video game and my virtual existence is where I can relax with discussion and companionship. Some would find it sad or pathological, but it's the only way and if my existence is any indication then there's going to be a whole generation of people living and dying like this with out any other recourse. People would be quick to blame me for being immature or non-cooperative or non-conforming, but those people don't understand what its like in the ... I can't even say “margins” or “shadows” because that's too lame. They don't understand what its like in spaces that don't exist.