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Outclassed by my fiction suit

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:21 / 26.02.02

Last Saturday, I had cause to get rid of a couple of pushy N-Power reps who'd come to my door. Motivated by the fact that I was halfway thru The Bride of Chucky and my scrambled eggs were getting cold, I shifted them without much trouble. Polite but firm, sort of thing.

My boyf overheard the encounter, and congratulated me on my not-taking-shitness. "That's what Mordant Carnival would have done," he said.

I realised that he was exactly right. I'd slipped into Mordant Carnival mode, without even thinking.

Anyone else find this- that their suit is just a bit more them than they are, and that they slip into suit mode when they need that extra dose of Themness?

23:24 / 26.02.02

i have never been good at this online personality thing. when i post as matsya, it's all me. adam ford. one hundred percent. aspects thereof.

but it's an interesting question - how many people here use their suit to do and say stuff they wouldn't do or say otherwise?

m.

23:30 / 26.02.02

Um, I was going to post a certain reply, but between hitting the reply button and getting to the new page, there is now a post by matsya that reflects very closely what I was going to say.

But for me it is more like my suit is an extension of certain aspects of me but certainly not one-hundered percent me. Closer to about 65% of me. Give or take.

m3

23:30 / 26.02.02

I actually find Mazarine is a pale shadow of myself, I'm blander here than in real life.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

23:35 / 26.02.02

Well, that's just it, you see. IRL, I'm only about 60-70% myself for the most part. On line, I can be 100% me, no additives, no preservatives.

I wasn't being nasty that day either- just showing some assertion. Like I say, 100% me.

23:44 / 26.02.02

Yarr MC, now that you mention it, I seem to recall reading a similar sentiment expressed by you some while ago.

What is it about RL that holds ya' back?

(aside from, of course, that you (inclusive) can’t always be 100% yourself IRL, ‘cause it might simply be too hard for others to handle)

23:46 / 26.02.02

Tyler Durden syndrome: I'm becoming my fictionsuit.

23:50 / 26.02.02

quote:Originally posted by [monkeys violating the temple]:
Tyler Durden syndrome: I'm becoming my fictionsuit.

Oi-vey! I sincerely hope ya' don't have to shoot yourself in the face to make it all better 'though.

m3

23:56 / 26.02.02

It sounds dumb, but it's like the [monkeys] fictionsuit is a proving ground for personality traits that I'd like to display in RL. The socialized "real me" is something constrained by socially enforced and reinforced memes of who others think I am/should be, in an almost operant conditioning sense, and how I perceive those expectations.
Compelled a lot by the "free-er" social interchange upon the board, I find myself appropriating and editing my non-board social self in a more open fashion, relative only to my own wants and needs. Hence I am moving towards resembling my artificially-constructed self.

00:04 / 27.02.02

Hmm. Nope...no compulsion to shoot myself in the face. Some other people I can think of, though....
It was more of a grounded descriptor than an accurate representation. Sort of post-Plato the-material-self-reaches-to-the-idealized-self-type thing. I think the entire idea of fictionsuit vs. self conlfict is interesting.

But I do make great soap.

00:14 / 27.02.02

[monkeys...]:

It doesn't sound dumb at all, at all!

I think it was maybe Maslow or Abrhams (or maybe Ganesh would know exactly who it is so I don't gotta' go on about name dropping the wrong names) whose (psychological) theory about personality included the idea that there is a dialectic (if you will) between trying to be an idealized version of who we think we ought to be and being who we actually are.

Aim for balance between the two and you'll do fine; which is to say that setting up an impossible to achieve idealized self will only set you up for pain and misery.

It is tough, sometimes, to get out of the roles that other people have you playing, but the fact that you are conscious of them gives you all the more room to {play}.

Or to cut to the chase: fiction suit as larvae, I dig it!

01:15 / 27.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Mordant C@rnival:
IRL, I'm only about 60-70% myself for the most part.

quote:Originally posted by modthree:What is it about RL that holds ya' back?

What it is for me is, the body. I feel like conventional wisdom goes that your body does traffic in the world, but your secret thoughts are a treasure onto yourself... well maybe that's not so conventional, but anyway I think the opposite. I think that ideas are pretty damn durable and you can hammer 'em all over the place; but the body can be broken, the body is vulnerable. Not even in terms of harm that can come to the body, just the damn awkwardness of having a bad hair day or eye contact or being in the same room with someone else. So I find often IRL that I suppress my ideas because I don't want to make life uncomfortable for my body. Whereas here <waving hands> no body, see? No blushing unless I want to type <blush>.

If I get angry with someone online, I can actually practice choosing my response like the self-help books say you should. A lot of times I actually can reprocess--not just neutralize an angry response, but transform the anger into something like insight. Whereas IRL when something happens, you can't get away, your face gets hot, you blink back tears, you certainly can't think... in this way I think the body actually limits the mind.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

01:29 / 27.02.02

I think the body is limiting full stop.

01:32 / 27.02.02

well put, persephone....
your reward...a pomengranite....

03:37 / 27.02.02

The Cop Killer fiction suit isn't really that much of a fiction suit, in fact, no fiction goes into this suit, it's basically an extention of me; except online you don't get to hear me sing to myself constantly, but now you know that I do that.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:10 / 27.02.02

I'm not sure about this question - I think that being Nick on Barbelith has allowed me to push the boat out and realise more clearly a few of the things I believe in, and therefore be more definite about them in the mundane world, as it were. But 'Nick' here is pretty much me, even down to the choice of words.

Although I do seem to squabble more here then offline.

I have had other suits, however, both personal and shared and one really odd one, and those have occasionally thrown up personality options which I wouldn't have considered.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

08:52 / 27.02.02

Weirdly enough, I think I'm pretty similar in both (ie usually pissed).
The thing that MAKES it weird, however, is that I got far too interested in doing impressions of "Stoatie" (who I kind of imagined as being like "Squatter", in the Derek & Clive "Squatter and the ant" sketch) a while back, and thought if I was him online, it would remove my desire to irritate the fuck out of everyone irl by doing it... but my online persona has gradually turned into me, and the original Stoatie turned out to just be a phase...
(I'm still a World War I flying ace, though. Oh yes, and a pirate.)

14:25 / 27.02.02

I think I may come across better in e-text because I get to think longer about what I say before I say it. the old cliche about caustic by e-mail, more polite IRL? the opposite for me. I also come across as a poorer writer, because most of the time I don't feel bother to slap down the most jewel-like, erudite prose. writing something 'serious', I do do that.

as I have said before up until recently my fictionsuit seemed a pale version of me. but then perhaps I never picked the right name when I used a fake one and now I use my real one.

I have had the e-mail names Bizarro and Froggy before and those worked for me far better.

[ 27-02-2002: Message edited by: Ria ]

14:50 / 27.02.02

My fiction suit swaped places with me a while back and trapped me in here while it has all the fun in real life.

15:08 / 27.02.02

Tom fucks up far more than Zoom does. It really has to do with being able to actually think about things for extended periods of time when I'm here, rather than the off-the-cuff reactions demanded by real life.

Zoom.

15:49 / 27.02.02

I think it's also that we do things here (oooer :P) which we just don't do IRL. True, the opportunity to discuss some of the stuff that comes up here does arise IRL. But lots doesn't. For me anyway. Things like the Genderfucked' or 'Lifeworld and Abstract' threads just don't occur in RL conversations very often. At least, not as often as I seem to think about stuff like this.

pointless and uncalled for

15:53 / 27.02.02

I'm not just outclassed by my fiction suit, it also gets the jobs that I apply for and won't even lend me a fiver when it's the end of the month.

But get this for cheeky, the other night I was at the local meat market and totally hitting on this foxy dumb blonde who was totally going to put out like crazy and my fiction suit just waltzes in and steals her while I was getting my coat.

I'm beginning to think that my fiction suit hates me.

The Planet of Sound

16:41 / 27.02.02

My fiction suit loves me. I am its bigger, wiser, sexier brother.

The Return Of Rothkoid

20:54 / 27.02.02

My fictionsuit inwardly bemoans my real-life lack of sartorial elegance. But it's far too polite to mention it outright; it just makes snide comments when I'm walking out the door.

09:42 / 28.02.02

Trijhaos is Thomas' idealized image of himself.

While Trijhaos will actually speak up and ask questions, Thomas will sit and think of all the possible outcomes of a given action or conversation. Unfortunately, Thomas focuses far too much on the negative aspects.

For example, if someone sees a relatively attractive person, they will probably attempt to strike up a conversation. Thomas wouldn't. He'd think nobody like that would want to speak with him and thinks they would call him "an ugly troll-like pervert" and run screaming away from him. As one can see, Thomas has self-image problems and his self-confidence has been shattered far too many times to count.

Trijhaos isn't afraid of looking stupid, after all words can't hurt right?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:42 / 28.02.02

Actually, it occurs to me that one of my suits taught me a few things. Although that's perhaps more because it was someone I had already been in real life.

I'm going to shut up now.

09:42 / 28.02.02

(With absolutely no background in psychology)

Ive always felt that personality is a deliberate construct. Its the interface that we design that allows us to interface with the world. Its a colloection of mores and idiosynchrasies that we have cobbled together in a semi coherent way. In some sense it is an expression of the "real" you, but it isnt the only expression.

Maybe Im thinking too much about my own personal experiences here which have often been about deciding what sort of personality I should have.

Anyway, my point is that when you enter a different social forum - talkboards, new friends, etc - it gives you the oppurtunity to tweak some of the ways in which you interact, because you are starting afresh.
You see this all the time when people you know act differently beacause of who they are with. This can be down to different interests and common ground with different people, but it seems a lot more to me.

Having a fiction suit is just an example of that, though it might be a more self conscious one. Ie, you actively decide which bits youd like to tweak.