you aren't what you post
am i living in the shadows of my online identity?
I spend a large portion of my life in paralysis, stuck in the gap between who I am and who I wish to be. Last year was a transformational period for me, the kind of coming-of-age moment you don’t appreciate until you’re out of it—a spiritual journey I chose to record here, for all to witness.
The pieces of myself I shared during one of the most difficult times of my life formed a new part of my online identity. A vulnerable part I’d previously been unwilling to share. However, the work I published here—these deeply intimate (and oftentimes extremely taxing) thoughts and musings—bore a stark contrast to the rest of my online identity. Simultaneously, I was running around the internet sharing memes, selfies, light-hearted jokes.
Unintentionally, I was moulding a complex, scattered online identity, and I quickly realised I had been for a very long time.
When we share pieces of ourselves across the myriad digital spaces we occupy, we begin breaking parts of ourselves off, forming an overexposed and fragmented Self. It’s similar to code-switching in a way: I conduct myself differently in front of my coworkers than I do my closest friends, the same way I tweet about my favourite TV show moments instead of my struggles with long-term happiness. That’s more of a Substack thing, you know? There’s a time and place, and many of us choose how much of ourselves to expose depending on circumstance and situation, so it makes sense that we’d inherently feel more earnest on certain platforms, ones where perhaps your co-workers and third-removed cousins don’t follow you, versus others.
The difference, however, is that when we fragment ourselves online, these micro-extentions of ourselves live on forever. What we share here, on the internet, is evergreen and discoverable by pretty much anyone, whether you’d like to believe it or not. Whereas, code-switching happens in the moment, perhaps behind closed doors or in front of a few close friends. If we say something embarrassing or overshare to the wrong person, the cringe may eat us alive for a while, but we never have to relive the moment outside of our overactive imagination.
With so much pressure to grandify ourselves online, many of us have begun entombing our Selves. Other people—sometimes friends, but most of the time strangers—use the thoughts and musings we share online to craft an elaborate narrative about us, one that may be untrue but that they’re eager to accept. Without interacting with you, people take your content at face value, forming judgements and crafting stories, tying your digital self up neatly like a bow, forgetting you exist outside static images and text posts.
As a digital native, I began crafting my online identity at a very young age. I’m at the point where Facebook sends me daily notifications to peek back at the statuses I posted over a decade ago. Although it’s special to be granted access to my younger self’s thoughts, it’s also difficult. I feel so removed from who I was even 3 years ago; having a play-by-play archive of my Self to constantly reference muddles my brain.
I’m 26 now and just beginning to figure out who I am. Yet, I feel compelled to live up to who I’ve already created, here—I worry I’ve solidified an identity for myself after many years of public vulnerability and oversharing. Is who I am on the internet who I am? Am I nothing more than what I post? Does my real Self pale in comparison? The version of me you may know—that you’ve maybe followed for years—is just a glimpse of who I truly am. Even my sincerest moments of online vulnerability don’t scratch the surface of everything I’m made up of. I don’t say that to expose myself as “fake” or to confess I’ve been tricking you. I say it to help you understand that you can only know someone so well through a screen. No single post makes up someone’s entire identity.
During moments of intense insecurity, my thoughts often drift toward comparing myself to my online Self: I wonder if I’ll ever live up to the girl I’ve curated here, whose darkest moments are perfectly summarised with witty commentary and insightful reflections. I wonder if you, dearest reader, would like me offline as much as you do online.
In the real world, I’m not always cool and collected, I don’t always know what to say—I waver on Bambi legs, stumbling through life:
I’ve unironically fallen to my knees on the kitchen floor after having my heart broken, not once but twice; during my first waitressing shift, I spilled an entire beer on an old lady; sometimes I say excuse me extremely passive aggressively when people are slowly walking in front of me.
In real life, I offer myself grace and compassion, knowing that if I embarrass myself, it’s just a fleeting moment. That mindset is difficult to maintain when evaluating who I am online. I worry about showing too much of myself, censoring truths for fear that they’ll be stuck with me forever, permanent reminders instead of transient experiences. Offline, I edit myself less, confident in who I am and how I move through the world. But editing myself for online consumption feels necessary. Although I sometimes revel in the ability to present myself perfectly, I feel required to revise myself in a way I normally don’t IRL.
These thoughts arrive at an interesting time. Last year, I wrote about being jealous of who I had been a year prior. This year, I find myself worried I’ll forever be chained to who I’ve been up until now, that you’ll approach my online past as a homogenetic picture of me rather than an incomplete mosaic that I’m still collecting pieces for.
My personhood is scattered across many different corners of the internet. It’s also scattered across many different cities and cultures and people. I exist both here and there. My identity shifts and evolves as I continue to explore who I am and who I’m becoming.
I am many things, most of which are contradictory and nuanced.
My goal, both online and off, is the same: authenticity, which is why I felt so compelled to share these thoughts with you.
At a time when the internet is swallowing us whole, where we’re in an active fight for our right to exist on our own terms online and off, I wanted to remind myself, and you, the static momentary glimspes you share online make up only a small fraction of who you are and the life you lead.
As our identities continue to be fragmented online, it’s important to remember that you never really know someone until you know them.
WOW! there’s a lot more of you than last week, i’m extremely humbled by the response to my last piece and hope you stay awhile ◡̈
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until next time…