filarial soup

what is this obsession with "real"?

i think we've all seen those bulletins bemoaning the "fakeness" of people on myspace and threatening to delete people from a friend's list unless they repost. i've had a few people try to entice me into being friends with them by writing me an e-mail stating that they are "real". not that they're good or true or funny or smart or nice to talk to, just "real", like its the only thing that truly matters.

i think when people use the word "real" on the internet, they intend to reflect that they present themselves in virtual reality just as they are in physical reality. i don't put a lot of stock in real. i think people who are "real" in this sense are boring, without imagination, and too easily manipulated by society. these people take great care in representing their physical selves in cyberspace as precisely, accurately, and anally as possible. they don't do this tedious chore for their own sake but, by their own admission, so they won't offend anyone else.
don't get me wrong, i don't believe its right for a person to misrepresent themselves to the detriment of others, like a pedophile who claims he's a 15 year old girl, but i do think that the internet should be a place where people aren't inhibited by their physical lives. this is a place where great experimentation is possible and adhering so closely to the rule of real shuts out vast opportunities for the unreal.

i love the internet because i can say just about anything i want without reprecussions. i can be anyone, i can meet anyone, i can engage anyone in conversation on any level as long as they are willing to meet me in my imaginary plane. if they insist on staying "real" then i doubt we'll ever get any farther than hello, what's your name, and how is the weather?

for the record, my representation of myself on the internet isn't entirely "real". yes, my name is brak, i'm a girl, those pictures are of me, and everything i write here comes from the heart, but i have many different hearts, different personas, and they aren't all given the opportunity of expression in everyday life- mostly due to societal restraints. if i only let my everyday, all-pupose Brak-persona out on the internet i'd be just as boring as i am in real life and how sad that would be. i have a whole villiage's worth of ideas and perspectives inside me and how pathetic and wasteful it would be to block out all but those that most accurately reflect the ideas that i have on a day-to-day basis; my "real" thoughts.

so next time someone claims that they are "real" you can count them as either a coward because they are too afraid to explore their own alternate dimensions, or a simpleton because they have no alternate dimensions. why did we create the social internet (as opposed to the business or information internet) if we were going to restrict it's population to everyday, real-life cowards and simpletons? in other words, people who have no soul, no originality, no vitality. and what good are these people to me? just a waste of virtual space.