You make excellent points, Karen.
Yet your arguments make the implicit assumption that posters on SI are essentially truthful -- that while they may only be revealing certain sides of the their personalities, that which is revealed is an honest and dependable representation of the actual person.
But we know that just isn't so in all cases. We had our own example on SI with Jonathan Lebed, who posed for years as an investor, a board member of at least one corporation, who spoke of his business connections, who described his family's involvement in one company that he was touting. All these representations were carried out masterfully, but were totally untrue. Jonathan was a 15-year-old boy operating a computer in his bedroom. Another case that made the papers was also a 15-year old, who managed to get himself hired by one of the legal advice web sites, posing as an attorney, and who became one of the most highly rated (by users) "lawyers" on the site.
So we know there are poseurs, charlatans, and connivers out there. We know it has happened on SI, and we have no idea how common it is. We know from stories concerning the dating pages or sites that misrepresentations of personal backgrounds are more the norm than the exception. We know that on SI we have had quite a few cases of people posting (or should I say posing) under more than one alias.
Chat lines like this one are a relatively new phenomenon. There are yet no studies (to my knowledge) to explore the question of how people behave on them, how truthful they are, what different motives there may be that cause them to be here. We know that there are Walter Mitty's in this world who enjoy posing as someone they are not, often by constructing very different and complex alternate personalities.
I think it is a commendable act of good faith to go with the belief that what you see here, alias or not, is the real person, albeit not fully fleshed out. Some others of us may be inclined to be cynical and skeptical about taking what we read here at face value insofar as it reflects the true person behind the alias.
The latter of us may be imagining something that does not exist, but we are not without foundation in our caution. |
