There has been one giant way I have acted differently online compared to in person. A lot of people who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community can agree that for the first bit of time while your out, its difficult to say “I’m Gay” or in my case “I’m trans”. It very much does apply to me too.
The difference of my transition online Vs. In Person is that I could basically go onto discord and copy and paste the same message in each server I was active in. Whereas in person I had to tell everyone individually and face them at some point after I told them. This caused me to avoid telling people who I knew in person for as long as possible, and I still haven’t told everyone. I am more confident not only in myself and my identity online, but also in my friends online because they are the ones I know will be there if I need to vent about anything that annoys me, or angers me. In person however, I just texted the people I cared about and have already told, and hoped that gave them time to process.
If I had to tell anyone face to face, I probably would still be hiding how I felt and dealing with the pain of dysphoria. Now I will spend the rest of this paragraph speaking about how I cannot know what would happen if I had made a different decision. When someone makes a decision, it is because they have reason or motive to but when someone has to make a spur of the moment decision or has to “theorize” what they would do, they will never be correct when they say “Maybe I could have done this”. People do not actually know what they would have done in other scenarios because everything they THINK they would do is just wrong.
Realistically the Online Disinhibition effect exists because people feel safer online for many reasons. Most of those people grew up with the internet but that doesn’t change the fact that having the internet and technology makes people feel like things might go more their way. They think they have more control over both themselves and the situation when they have time to breath and let their thoughts give the answer they want to give rather than the emotional answer they are afraid of. If people didn’t feel like things could go their way on the internet we would be dealing with a whole different world, maybe for better, maybe for worse but no matter what it would be different. I do think social media companies have a part in this safety but I don’t think it is a conscious control they have. I don’t think they realize the level of safety feeling their giving to their consumers and I don’t think they realize how much control they have over it.
Why do I always address emotional and/or difficult situations over text? Am I biased due to some fear of rejection or disappointment on someone’s face? Is there someone I trust enough to not need the safety of the post modern technology? Those are my questions
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