‘I put on my robe and wizard hat’.
If you were part of the online community in early 2000’s that phrase may ring a bell. If not, Google:Â “bloodninja”.
Last night I reread the fake IM (instant messaging) dialogue between bloodninja and BritneySpears14 and was again in stitches. Here is a sample text:
bloodninja: King Arthur congratulates me for destroying Dr. Robotnik’s evil army of Robot Socialist Republics. The cold war ends. Reagan steals my accomplishments and makes like it was cause of him.
bloodninja: You still there baby? I think it’s getting hard now.
bloodninja: Baby?
This may leave some of you cold but my sense of humour is reasonably juvenile. My formative years were spent being exposed to such gems that the first online communities threw up. Like many, I have spent a goodly number of hours sniggering at the glow of what was originally a hefty CRT screen.
The internet has sped up the dissemination of humorous phrases and stories that have subsequently entered the Zeitgeist, (spirit of the times). In past generations this was a function of the field of oral history; stories and proverbs were passed on orally between individuals and neighbouring communities.
This inherent need to pass on and retain “language memes” is given new life by the instantaneous transmission of information and ideas over the internet. The internet was once a useful tool. Now it may be becoming an extension of our physical selves. It may be wedded to us even more than we realise.
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New generations are emerging with at least two distinct aggregations of interactions and thus perhaps at least two separate personalities: 1. Online personas laid down by the sum total of online interactions: online gaming, blogging, etc and 2. Their real life selves. The two may react completely differently given similar situations and the differing levels of privacy accorded by physical anonymity.
The internet is effectively a cloaking device for the information that can be gleaned by thin slicing, not what a person tells you, but what a person is actually saying with their body language. Individuals may act more or less provocatively and candidly at the end of the keyboard.
One question is: Does this make us more honest or less so?
We may even create Selves of the opposite sex to fulfill desires unable to be satisfied in the real world; whole new Selves at the end of the keyboard. Selves that can be compartmentalized and donned according to the needs of a particular social situation or desire.
Selves that can bully, generated by the normally meek and kind. Selves that can incite to revolution by the apathetic, inflamed by a particular issue. Selves that can consume, able to order from the internet as well as shop in real life.
What implications will the emergence of internet personas have for democracy, civil society and politics over the next decade. Are there really 7 billion of us on this Earth?
Or is this planet is even more crowded?
