This post has been sitting unfinished in draft mode for some time. While I may have started writing it with a vision of what its intention was, this has long since faded so it now reads like a selection of somewhat associated thoughts that miss a forgotten destination. But that’s OK. Sometimes you have to be comfortable with the mess, and I reserve the right to be messy.
Since publishing a recent post on John/Lucas plausibility I’ve been thinking a little about the issue of our own dual identities, specifically in regard to our online identities versus our “real life” ones. Consider this post a bit of thinking out loud on this matter. While of course our online identities are part of our real lives, sometimes they represent a vision of ourselves that is not entirely consistent with our real life self. Is there a bit of John/Lucas in all of us?
In case you didn’t already know, my online moniker “Skully” is a pseudonym. I have two Facebook profiles, one for Skully and one for me. I know I’m not alone in this. Many readers of this blog and fellow blogger buddies also go by pseudonyms and have an online identity that obscures or conceals their true identity, and for good reason I’m sure. Personally, I do on occasion find this balancing act difficult to negotiate. Whilst the only part of Skully that is fabricated is the name, having a distinct online and offline identity that are virtually the same makes me wonder about the point of having these two identities in the first place.
This issue came to a head recently when I decided to resurrect my personal blog for my real life self. ‘Skully’ already has a personal blog in which I talk about all manner of things, including my journey with PCOS and cyclothymia. After setting up my old blog for ‘me’ I soon realised that my dual identities may be competing for content on their respective blogs. Which parts of my self would I be divvying up between Skully and me? I would like to start blogging about my experiences with attempting to learn the German language – but which identity would be best suited to this task, Skully or me? How absurd to even have this quandary!
Unlike John/Lucas, Skully/me aren’t so easily discernible, we’re more or less the same (actually, I’m not so sure that John/Lucas is as easily discernible as discussion about him suggests – I guess I see John/Lucas as two sides of the one coin, rather than two distinct people). Skully does however engage with subjects that I’m not so comfortable with my real life self being publicly associated with. Partly for professional reasons and partly because I suspect I might self-censor more if my real name was attached to these writings, so that might be where the purpose of Skully is found. But at the same time, should any of my real life friends come across SFB or my personal blog, I know that it probably would not take them long to figure out who Skully could be. I’m not sure there are too many PhD students who love Spooks, are long term fans of Henry Rollins, who learn German, live in Australia and have PCOS and cyclothymia. So, clearly, I’ve not been overzealous in protecting my identity in that sense. In fact I’ve told a select number of trusted friends about these blogs who are interested in my online activities, of which there has been many! And some of you who read this blog have also have been previ to the real life me, you know who you are.
I have, however, had reason to pause and reflect on my laxness on this front recently after my mother mentioned that she had googled ‘Richard Armitage’. One of her friends has RA syndrome apparently and she was curious. She knows I like RA too and we sometimes talk about Spooks. It made me stop and wonder, how would I feel about the prospect of my mother stumbling across this blog? The answer to that is pretty uncomfortable! But the bigger question is – why would it be an issue for me if she did? (How would you feel about your friends or family members becoming acquainted with your online activities?)
It’s an interesting question. All of us have multiple selves through which we act and interact with others based on the nature and context of our relationship to them (eg. the self you present to your friends may be moderately different to the one you present to your parents or to your work colleagues). It’s normal to share your self to varying degrees with different people. However in the online space, it feels like something more than the usual matter of multiple selves. By attaching a name to the online selves that we have created, this could be seen as pushing the online self into the domain of having another identity. And this is where things start to get weird. I’ve become quite attached to the name Skully, to the point that I prefer it over my real name!
Ok, at this point I’m going to take a liberal interpretation of some concepts related to the self, namely the idealised self and the mortified self, and have a play. It would be my preference to consolidate my online selves into the one entity/identity/representation, but those aspects of my self that are associated with my mortified self (those that attract stigma, embarrassment, self-consciousness or a simple sense of uncomfortableness and unease) request that Skully continues to be, especially given that this compulsion to write is unlikely to cease any time soon. My idealised self is comfortable, open and honest about my mental health, but in real life, the situation is more complex; the mortified self is more present and selective about what I share. For example, just recently I lied to a friend about how I acquired a massive bruise on my arm. My mortified self was not prepared to reveal that it was in fact the result of self-harm (don’t be alarmed, all is well, it was an isolated event. And yes, I am in therapy!).
My desire to consolidate Skully/me is based on the desire to feel whole and honest in all social contexts to the extent that it is sensible and possible. I don’t imagine this to be uncommon among people who struggle with mental health issues, but this is a difficult thing to achieve (for others as well, I imagine). Since a young age I’ve felt pressure to hide my struggles with depression, to put up a brave face and protect others from having to see and deal with my ‘soul sickness’ (a favourite phrase for depression I’ve appropriated from William James. ‘Illogical darkness’ is another one I rather like – thank you Iggy Pop!). As a consequence, one is never quite whole in the presence of others. Concealing undesirable parts of ones identity, in this case, being a “depressive”, becomes second nature. In the online space one does not have to be so concerned about such things. In this space, wholeness feels more possible…. sort of.
I’m sure there must be some academic work out there on the idealised self in relation to how we present ourselves online. The most obvious example of idealised representations of ourselves online are the photographs we choose to adorn our social networking profiles and the selective nature of information that we choose to share. In some respects Skully is my idealised self (hence the attachment to the name, I guess) in the sense that through this identity I talk freely about my health troubles, and about my interest in Spooks which in real life contexts may seem a bit unusual for a person of my age. But in another sense my idealised self would not be prone to mental health challenges, so my notion of an ideal self might be somewhat different to the norm in that the undesirable aspects of myself are a valuable part of it.
Now diverging wildly back to John/Lucas – John may have represented the mortified self, and Lucas was the idealised self. I suggest there was an element of mortification in respect to John due to what I sensed was a reluctance in John/Lucas to fall back into his old John Bateman ways (or maybe it’s Lucas who is mortified by John – I’m working with a loose, undefined version of the concept here, so anything goes). There could be a Guy of Gisborne comparison here, in that where Gisborne felt that marrying Marian would make him pure, in becoming Lucas, John was purified for his sins to some degree as well, putting him in “credit”, as John termed it.
Was ‘Lucas North’ John Bateman’s idealised self? John wanted to be something, to do something, a desire that was lead astray in Dakar. John became a better man by becoming the man he admired and liked (it reminds me of the circumstance of some men who kill women whilst also wanting to become one, such as Paul Denyer). I imagine John killed the Lucas North for reasons relating to the bombing of the embassy, but there might also be an element of destroying that which he wanted to be. Perhaps there’s a concept in psychology that describes this phenomenon, I’m drawing blanks here.
John protected an idealised self via Lucas North, we also often protect an idealised self through our online identities. Whilst I’m sure none of you are concealing anything as horrible as a terrorist act, perhaps there is a little of John/Lucas in all of us. The parts we don’t like and attempt to hide. A mixture of truth and charade, and parts/attributes of other people that we have picked up along the way and hope to emulate. What am I saying here? I don’t really have a particular point to hammer home, other than to suggest that we are all complex creatures with a complex networks of selves, and perhaps in some cases, multiple identities. In a recent post I spoke of why John/Lucas was tangible to me, I guess the theme which this and that post have in common is the suggestion that John/Lucas is not necessarily a complete impossibility. Instead of rejecting him as fanciful fiction, ponder for a moment that he is a mirror through which we might reflect on the complex nature of our own characters. He is of course an extreme and some might say unrealistic example, but he still offers an invitation to consider the dualities, hypocrisies, and illogicalities within ourselves.
Do you have a dual identity, online/offline? Why? How do you balance the two? Thoughts, comments and musings are welcome below.
