Well, I never thought I'd be doing this, but today I'm going to be writing an evaluation; an evaluation of my personal identity on the Internet. I'm going to take you, my dear readers, through all of my Internet personas (or at least as many as I can remember) and try to remember what kind of character I made - or am still making - myself out to be. So, here goes...
First, I have my overall identity, which is tom_349. The origin of this persona is shrouded in mystery and is only truly known to myself. I feel it gives me a slight air of secrecy... Nah, only joking; it was one of a choice of random numbers (assigned to me by hotmail for my email address) and I took a liking to it. I use tom_349 to represent me for everything. It is my PlayStation Network (PSN) name, and I also use it as my account name on EVERYTHING. It sometimes gets shortened to tom349 if the website won't allow symbols in account names. So, if you see tom_349 anywhere then you know who you're dealing with =] I even use it on this blog... I like using it because it doesn't make any assumptions about how I view myself or give too much away (except my name of course), for example, a player called "MasterSniper1990" (i don't know if this name actually exists, it's just an example) seems pretentious to me, as it implies the user sees themself as some form of gaming wonder when playing FPSs like COD4. It does however give another player great satisfaction to beat someone like "MasterSniper" at his/her own game =] BY SHOOTING THEM IN THE HEAD! *ahem* Anyway...
However, I also like to create characters in games with a narrative behind them, if I'm given the choice to design the character myself. I feel this is what separates certain members of the internet community from others. A lot of users see their characters as a representation of themselves. They make their character look like they do and maybe give it their real-life name, thus reducing it from a character to an avatar, which, as you know, is a representation of the user. I don't personally like to de-characterise my creations, and see them as they're own entity almost. I control the character, but I am not the character itself. That is why I don't use tom_349 for character names. My character in World of Warcraft is a female Night Elf called Mtriirel. It would have been M'triir'el but WoW doesn't let you put anything other than letters in names (It's pronounced Mer-treer-rell, by the way). I made up the name with inspiration from Tolkien's elvish, as once again, I like to make a narrative and persona for the character that seems believable. I have, however, seen characters on WoW called Scaryme 0_o
Mtriirel
Although it may seem like the internet is an entirely different world to the one we live in, there are still pockets of it that supplement real-life. Social networks like Facebook for example allow people to communicate in a new way. The fact that users display their real names and images means they cannot create a new identity for themselves, and instead allows them to promote their existing identity.
Well, I'm done for now. I hope you enjoyed this, and so...
Until next time, Don't eat the yellow snow.
- tom_349
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