Online Identities, Part 1

Originally published April 11, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1221

Once upon a time, one had to be face to face in order to have social intercourse. (Remember, kids, be careful when having social intercourse: When you talk to a person, it’s as if you’re talking to everyone that person ever spoke to.) Now, however, you have the solitude of computer terminals, and are able to hide behind fake names and even fake locations.

And yet the anonymity can have curious and fascinating spin-offs. Herewith an intriguing anecdote of the new age of Isolinear Isolation. However I have changed the names of those involved, either to protect them from further public embarrassment, or else because they’re so obnoxious that I don’t want to give them more of the notoriety that their conduct clearly indicates they crave.

It was about 6 in the morning on Sunday and I had worked all night. But I was too awake to sleep, and so I decided to jump onto AOL and see if anyone was around.

I found a chat room where a group of comics fans had gathered. As is customary, everyone was using fake names. I started talking with one of them, while at the same time watching some of the cross-talking going on.

(Keep in mind once more: I am using different names than the real participants were using, while trying to keep the flavor of those actually involved. In doing so I’m probably going to wind up using names of other AOL participants who genuinely go by those handles. To paraphrase the old warning: Any resemblance to the names of actual fake people is purely coincidental.)

One of the participants was Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl, as I noticed in various cross-talk comments, was about fourteen and she lived in the Bronx. Also present was Robin, who was doing some heavy-duty flirting with Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl was being coy in response. Robin wanted to go out with Wonder Girl, and Wonder Girl replied that she had a boyfriend: Flash Gordon.

“I’d fight him for you!” declared Robin zealously. This went on for a bit, and then Wonder Girl announced that she’d be right back, because she was getting a phone call. Moments later she said, “Guess what. That was Flash Gordon. Robin, you said you’d fight him for me. So he’s coming online, so you two can fight it out. Well, I have to go to the supermarket now. Bye.”

And Wonder Girl vanished.

And, about ninety seconds later, Flash Gordon materialized, spoiling for a fight. “Who wants to fight me!” he thundered. “I’m looking for the guy who was interested in Wonder Girl. Come on. Who was it? Who wants to fight me for her?” Robin the Gutless Wonder had lapsed into sudden silence, which was remarkable enough in itself. Who in the world is concerned about getting into a fight—in cyberspace? What was Flash Gordon going to do? Punch out Robin? I mean, forget about walking-the-walk; if you can’t talk-the-talk in cyberspace, where can you?

But Robin’s sudden reticence was secondary to the obvious sham of what I was seeing. And as Flash Gordon continued to look for a fight, I said to the guy I was speaking to, “Do you believe this silliness with Flash Gordon? Who does he think he’s fooling?”

My comments caught Flash’s eye. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

I said, “Oh, come on. It’s perfectly obvious that you and Wonder Girl are the same person. That there is no Wonder Girl.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he declared.

“Then where is she?” I asked.

“She had to go out food shopping,” Flash informed me.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so blunt. I was dealing with a teenager here. But I hadn’t slept all night and my patience and judgment weren’t what they should have been. Nor did I really, fully understand what I was getting into. I was simply carried along with the flow of the conversation, rather than really dwelling on the impact I was about to have on the person on the other end.

I said, “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that a teenage girl had to go out food shopping. At 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. In the Bronx.”

“There was probably something she needed,” said Flash Gordon.

“At six in the morning? On a Sunday? In the Bronx?”

“That’s how girls are,” Flash claimed defensively.

I said, “Aw, come on, Flash. You’re asking me to believe that this girl just happens to be talking about you, and then you just happen to call, and then she just happens to leave as you just happen to get online? Don’t you see what a stretch that is?”

“She knew she could leave because I was going to fight on her behalf and take on the guys who were coming on to her,” explained Flash.

“Y’know, that’s pretty odd, Flash,” I replied. “Most teenage girls I know, they would have stayed to watch their boyfriends mix it up with a guy to fight for their honor. But not Wonder Girl, no. She goes food shopping. At 6 in the morning. On a Sunday. In the Bronx.” And other people, noticing the cross-chat, started to comment on the unlikelihood of this as well.

“We’re two different people,” Flash maintained forcefully. “Check our profiles. You’ll see. There’s different profiles.”

Profiles, you have to understand, are descriptions that people create for themselves when they come online. They have no necessary adherence to reality at all. Nonetheless I checked out both Flash Gordon’s and Wonder Girl’s profiles. Each of them provided detailed information, and each of them also talked about each other in glowing, romantic terms. They also both mentioned a third person, Erik the Red, as a mutual best friend. I came back and said, “Yup. Two different profiles. You’re right.”

“You see?” said Flash, triumphant.

“Strange, though,” I observed, “that there are identical grammatical mistakes and misspellings in both, which would indicate they were created by the same person.”

And Flash Gordon freaked out.

He began doing the computer equivalent of screaming, typing entirely in caps, “WE’RE NOT THE SAME PERSON! WE’RE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE!” Profanity-ridden postings screeched across the computer screen.

Now as I noted, I was sleep deprived. I was even starting to drift off a bit, the main thing keeping me awake being the clattering of the keyboard. But this snapped me back to full wakefulness. This was no longer a mental exercise. This was a complete meltdown. A line had been crossed from chat into psychodrama. Realizing that Flash Gordon had lost it, other people in the chat room started to move in for the kill, and I immediately started reining them back, sending them private messages saying, “We better give him some space, fast.” Publicly I typed as quickly as I could, “Okay, Flash, you’re two different people. Fine. You win. I’m sorry I thought otherwise. My mistake.” And Flash seemed to calm back down.

I had never seen anything like it. It had caught me completely off-guard. And later one of the AOL regulars explained it to me as not being uncommon at all. The term for it is “Loner’s Syndrome.”

Imagine yourself as a classic misfit. You have almost no friends, no social life. You’re an outcast, you can’t get a date, you’re socially inept, girls won’t give you the time of day. In short, you’re what I was like all during junior high and the first two years of high school.

And so you flee to the last bastion of societal anonymity. You go to AOL.

And there you create an identity for yourself. Brave. Heroic. Dashing.

But that’s not enough. You want the folks on AOL to think you’re a cool guy. That you’re da bomb (and boy, isn’t it funny how that phrase didn’t exist in a positive connotation when I was a kid, when we were concerned about someone dropping Da Bomb). How do you come across as cool to the other guys? Easy. By having a babe for a girlfriend.

So you create a girlfriend. An aggressive flirt, coy and teasing, who only has eyes for you. Makes the other guys jealous, and elevates you because, hey, there must be something great about you if this hot chick considers you her one-and-only. And you also fabricate a best friend, just to show you can hang with the guys as well. In short, you create an entire social life for yourself—and it’s just you.

On the one hand I can sit here in judgment, separated by several decades from the state of mind that would lead to such actions. On the other hand, I can’t help but note that I create characters for a living, and if there had been computers when I was a teenager, I might have done the same thing.

And so, the moral of the story is: If you’re going to make up other identities, be a little more slick about it.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Letters can also be addressed there to his eldest son, Rex, his hot mistress, Gabrielle, his talking dog Cuddles, and, of course, Skippy the Jedi Droid. Next week: more online adventures.)