I find it really important to create an online personality that tallies with the image I want others to have of me at all times. It is important that I do this because I –like most people – am quite easy to read.
I am especially easy to read now than I was some years ago, thanks to my social media statuses, my comments and the profile pictures I use on those platforms.
A careful study of my online personality is all someone may need in arriving at a solid conclusion of what I am like in actual life.
You may disagree; you say it will be unfair for anyone to assume knowledge of my character from a virtual platform. Surely, people ought to know that most of the posts on social media is for banter; a way of whiling away the time while trotros, salon cars and taxis convey us slowly towards campuses, offices and homes.
Read more:
Jokes cannot be mere jokes; if they could it wouldn’t be irreverent to laugh at the news broken lives and souls of genocide or at children living with cancer. All I will need to say is: it’s a joke. Jokes are not mere jokes because I am my jokes; the things that make me laugh gives clear indications of who I am.
Who am I then? Can I post my jokes and still live the life of actual-life angel with candy wings? I very much doubt I can; I cannot be ‘nice’ in real life if all it takes to turn me into a foul-mouthed, insensitive troll is the anonymity of Twitter handles and Facebook names.
I will only not be the hypocrite every loves to hate when I succeed in reconciling my offline personality to my Twitter and Facebook personality. It will mean deliberately crafting, and portraying a presence which truly reflects how I want to be viewed, and judged, by friends and strangers alike.
It may mean refusing to forward, comment or favourite a post which portrays me in a bad light.
Above all, I may need to go the dramatic mile of scribbling this on my bathroom wall: Inconsistency in character is a magnet that attracts the world to dig through the folds of my life; when they did hard enough, they will find something.