The Online Persona

I have been having a conversation with a few people regarding online personas. I have been trying to make sense of this one and I did a little searching and found this on Stay of Execution. She writes:

This is about someone trying to create an online identity, and going to surprising lengths to do so. That interests me. All of those of us who blog end up creating these online personas, sometimes deliberately and sometimes as a by-product of saying whatever it is we have to say. The interplay between the online identity and the "real" identity interests me. There are intelligent, articulate bloggers who I suspect of using their blogs as a way to imagine and promote a particular sense of self, and when I read those bloggers I'm less interested in who they are trying hard to convince me they are than in the little bits of who they are that slip past the carefully constructed voice. There are articulate, intelligent bloggers whose online voice reflects an identity that they may not wish to show in real-life, and so there's a ring of truth and authenticity even in blogs that mask the identity of their creators. But the artifice of using authentic voices of others, stolen without attribution, to create an online identity that isn't mapped to a real-world persona, well, it eludes me. I wonder what part of the story I'm missing.

The post on her blog is more concerned with people posting to their blogs text from other blogs and then claiming authorship. I am not so much interested in the plagiarization of blogs (another post maybe, but who would really copy a blog anyway?) but why people create imaginary personas. It is interesting that people would crate ficticious online people. I am trying to imagine what "gets the person off" to write a blog - but to write a fake blog must be quite the online drug. One thing I have noted is that a lot of blogs that are unique and generate a lot of traffic are, usually, really bizarre blogs. For example, the dullest blog in the world gets a lot of web traffic. That is, when they post.

So, what are the reasons? I don't think I have much of an online persona but I have never kept it a secret that I maintain a vague commentary regarding personal details. I don't give out details that I deem inappropriate to post. But, it wouldn't take long to find out where I live or anything of that nature. Just go ahead and Google me.

I did some more searching and found this article regarding Kaycee Nicole. Apparently, Kaycee Nicole was a ficticious character created by a parent and daughter team. The Kaycee character was a high school student dying from cancer and had an online blog. Now, what gets interesting is that the character and the character's mother were both blogging their cancer related stories.

There is also the event from earlier this year regarding Andy Kaufman returning from the dead. This caused quite the stir and it looks like "Andy" has gone back into hiding. Gee, darn it.

Now, the Kaycee and Kaufman stories point out that there really is a portion of bloggers or writers out there who are completely out to lunch. Ficticious people are created and written about all of the time. I suppose what is scary is that there is really no way to prove who is who online. There is really no certain procedure to follow.

What do you think?

Tags: online+persona