The visual representation of who I am is carefully chosen, intended to be a first impression for someone who doesn’t know me but might want be interested in what I’m saying. With the rise of Twitter and Facebook, a name is no longer enough. Images are far more powerful.
Here, I am a stranger behind a mask, mysterious, perhaps dangerous. Or maybe I’m unwilling to let you, the stranger, learn anything about me before I choose to tell you. Once, this mask had blank, white spaces for eyes, now eyes peer out in sort of a displaced stare.
It isn’t me. It doesn’t represent me. What I write here, what I write on Twitter, FriendFeed, identi.ca, what I write and shape in an effort to write micropoetry in 140 characters or less, is me. The text is me; the avatar is an invention that tells you nothing about me (other than possibly that my Photoshop skills are barely adequate…).
There is a meme traveling around Facebook right now: 25 random things about me. I’ve received at least 4 requests there to post those 25 things, and I can’t help but wonder why I should. This blog has been around for 3 1/2 years now…I’ve written lots and lots of words, posted images, video, rants, raves, facts and fiction. If you can’t find 25 things about me in this blog, I’ve failed. Is it necessary to summarize it now? And why do I owe anyone disclosure of 25 random things about me?
There is always that small nugget of doubt. No matter that I may email someone I met on Facebook or Twitter, maybe even speak to them on the phone here and there, rush to their aid when they’re in need or rejoice with their triumphs. I might know things about them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I know them, that they should be trusted or should trust me. Connections are as tenuous as the pipeline that carries the zeroes and ones translated through processors and filters to become “online”. There is the very real possibility that they will disappear tomorrow, possibly even with the echo of a laugh behind them as their gesture reveals their masquerade. Or not.
In the end, there’s a price for transparency. There are those who will prove themselves to be something other than what they represented, and others who will surprise you with their genuine good nature and generosity, good deeds done in secret, no avatar required.
I suppose it’s not much different in the physical world we inhabit, where we pass strangers in the grocery store, nod and move to the opposite side of the aisle while pretending to read the label.
